University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

Table 3. Environmental, social cultural and economic impacts of field biomasses.
Environmental
impacts
of field
biomasses
+ Easy to
produce.
- Loss of biodiversity.
- Farming
becomes more
unilateral.
Social
impacts
of field biomasses
+ Creates jobs.
+ An option to the
consumer.
- Food should not
be a fuel.
Cultural
impacts
of field biomasses
+ Known type.
- Difficult for
people to adapt
to.
- Food should not
be a fuel.
Economic
impacts
of field biomasses
+ More business to
the farming industry.
+ Uses existing
products and
machinery.
+ Creates jobs to the
whole value chain.
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Environmentally field biomasses are globally easy to produce. For example, barley
and maize are types of crops that are easy to farm. But if biomass is produced for
extensive use, it means that there will become larger farms, which leads to more and
more forests to be cut down to make space for farming. This will cause extensive
loss of biodiversity. As farming becomes more unilateral with maximum use of
automation, fertilizers pesticides and herbicides, biodiversity will be destroyed
completely.
Socially this kind of biofuel creates jobs and gives options to consumers to choose
what kind of energy resources to use. One major social problem is that biomasses are
mainly produced from crops, which can be, and according to many people and
organizations, should be, used for food, not for fuel.
Culturally this food-for-fuel issue is a grave problem because many native foodstuffs
may disappear into fuel tanks. Organizations have raised their voices about this: they
say that food for fuel is wrong; it is unethical and kills the culture of farming for food.
On the other hand, biomasses are not a very new biofuel type to people; hence it is
easy for people to adapt field biomass fuel to their every-day life as an option to
conventional fossil fuel.
Economically fuels refined from field biomasses are rather sustainable. They create
more business to the farming industry. Since field biomass fuel production can use
existing products and machinery, they do not necessarily require further investments.
However, fuel production is usually large-scale production, which puts pressure on
small-scale farmers to expand their business. Field biomass fuels create jobs to the
whole value chain when considering the production of biomass from raw material to
reuse.
Field biomasses belong both, cradle-to-grave and cradle-to-cradle approaches. The
reason for this is that these biomasses are produced as both liquid and solid fuels.
Biomasses that are liquid fuels, belong to the cradle-to-grave approach due to the fact
that they are healthy to the environment and restorative but cannot be used as a
nutrient or recovered or remanufactured. However, the solid fuel types of biomasses
belong to the cradle-to-cradle approach, because they can be used as a nutrient for