trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

additional imports of biofuels, but the ecologically sustainable production outside Europe is difficult toachieve and to monitor (EEA, 2008).Another argument for criticising the assumption of increased energy security is the dependency ofbiofuel production on fossil fuels. Biofuels are presented as a substitute for fossil fuels, but theirproduction is totally dependent on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are needed to work the land, sow the seeds,and produce synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, to harvest the crops and to process and transport theend product. In order to genuinely decrease dependency on fossil fuels, the production processes ofbiofuels would have to run completely on renewable energy. That would consume a great share of thebiofuels produced, and make the achievements of the biofuel targets even more difficult.3.1.4. Effects on the rural development in developing countriesMajority of the expansion in bioenergy crop cultivation currently happens in the biologically rich andproductive areas in developing countries, and the new land for food production is often cleared fromforests and grass lands.Some studies have carried out estimations for different regions of the world. In Figure 1 is asummary of the results of these studies for the year 2050, with a distinction between developing andindustrialized countries. The global primary energy supply in 2007 (IEA, 2009) is reported for reference.Figure 6.Contribution of industrialized and developing regions to total bioenergy supply in2050. Estimations are taken from Berndes et al. (2003) and Thrän et al. (2010)235