University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

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especially emissions, to prove the advantage of bioenergy use (for example, ExternE
project). Some socio-economical externalities are also considered. For example,
externalities evaluation models based on multipliers as BIOSEM (Stravroulia 2003),
ABM (Madlener et al. 2000), or INPUT-OUTPUT models (Avonds et al. 2004;
Federal Planning Bureau 2006) assess employment and income externalities of
bioenergy. Some other models as ELVIRE, SAFIRE, or PLANET try to take into
account socio-economical and environmental externalities but they evaluate only few
externalities. A large number of externalities is never integrated into a same model
(Stirling 1997; Madlener et al. 2000; Domac et al. 2000; Hektor 2002; O’Doherty et
al. 2007), except in the CASES project (CASES 2006; CASES 2007) which gathers
different models to evaluate a greater number of socio-economical and
environmental externalities.
From this literature review, it also appears that, even if several methods to monetize
externalities exist (Pearce et al. 2006; Atkinson et al. 2007; De Palma et al. 2007;
Jenkins et al. 2007), externalities are sometimes quantified (tons of CO2 emitted,
number of jobs created…) but rarely monetized (cost of one ton of CO2, benefits
from job creation…).
In order to enhance bioenergy externalities evaluation and monetization, we propose,
in section 2, a list of externalities or sustainability criteria that were selected through
literature and stakeholders' consultation. Section 3 focuses on the articulation of
those sustainability criteria. We use sub-models to study cause-effect relationships,
feedbacks, induced and non-linear effects, and to build the global qualitative model.
In section 4, we conclude, giving the limitations of the proposed model and the
perspectives of future research.
This research is the first step in the design of a quantitative model allowing the
evaluation and comparison of those externalities for different bioenergy routes. It
will enable, on the one hand, the monetization of measurable sustainability criteria
and their introduction in a policy support model, and, on the other hand, the
qualitative assessment of other sustainability criteria and their potential introduction
in a certification scheme.
Selection of Externalities or Sustainability Criteria
“An externality is present whenever the well-being of a consumer or the production
possibilities of a firm are directly affected by the actions of another agent in the
economy” (Mas-Colell et al. 1995). Externalities are goods which have positive or
negative interest for economic agents but that are not sold on market. As externalities
are market imperfections, they can prevent Pareto efficient allocation of resources
(Varian 1994).
To define a list of externalities to take into account when assessing bioenergy routes,
we consider a panel of initiatives led by different stakeholders (consultants,
government representatives, distributors, social and/or environmental Non-
Governmental Organizations (NGOs)…) on different agricultural products (soy,
palm oil, fruits and vegetables, coffee, wood…):