University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

ARTICULATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL
- ECONOMIC EXTERNALITIES FROM BIOENERGY:
A Qualitative Model
Abstract
BROSE, I. 52 , VAN STAPPEN, F. 53 , CASTIAUX, A. 54
552
Bioenergy from agriculture is considered as a way to reduce GHG emissions and thus global
warming and climate change. Bioenergy also presents other externalities as impacts on
environment quality, biodiversity, direct and indirect land-use changes, local prosperity, social
well-being, etc. These externalities must be assessed in order to enhance responsible politics’ and
managers’ choice of the best bioenergy route(s).
From our literature review and assessment of certification initiatives, we have derived the list of
externalities, also called sustainability criteria, to take into account in bioenergy routes
assessment.
The sustainability criteria selected are interlinked and cannot be evaluated in isolation. They are
thus articulated into a qualitative model. This model defines links between criteria and
characterises them into positive or negative correlations, and indeterminate relations.
Keywords: bioenergy, externalities, qualitative model, sustainability criteria
Introduction
Bioenergy from agriculture is today in the heart of sustainable development. Each
bioenergy production and conversion route presents environmental and socioeconomical
externalities. These must be assessed in order to enhance responsible
politics’ and managers’ choice of the best bioenergy route(s)55. However, these
externalities are not independent. A good understanding of the potential interactions
between the externalities is of prime importance to put into evidence non linear
effects that would considerably affect one or several of the environmental and/or
socio-economical externalities during the implementation of the chosen bioenergy
route.
Large part of literature is mostly interested by internal costs of bioenergy production
and conversion, and by the comparison of (bio)energy economic viability and costeffectiveness.
Some environmental externalities are sometimes taken into account,
52 Corresponding author : University of Namur, Louvain School of Management, Rempart de la Vierge, 8, 5000
Namur, Belgium, Tel: +32 81 72 53 15, isabelle.brose@fundp.ac.be
53 Walloon Agricultural Research Centre
54 University of Namur, Louvain School of Management
55 This paper is tied to the TEXBIAG project: “Decision-Making Tools to Support the Development of
Bioenergy in Agriculture”. This project is sponsored by the BELgian Science POlicy and led by Walloon
Agricultural Research Center, University of Namur, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven.