Sine Qua Nons of sustainable biofuels: Distilling implications of under-performance for national biofuel programs

Laura German, Ariane Goetz, Tim Searchinger, Gustavo de L.T. Oliveira, Julia Tomei, Carol Hunsberger and Jes Weigelt

Energy Policy, 2017, vol. 108, issue C, 806-817

Abstract: Biofuels have been promoted worldwide under the assumption that they can support several strategic policy goals, while mitigating associated risks. Drawing on published evidence on performance, contributing papers to this Special Section question assumptions commonly attributed to biofuels: their carbon neutrality, their positive effect on rural livelihoods, and policymakers’ ability to effectively govern for sustainability. This paper takes these findings as its starting point and asks, “What next?” for countries wishing to advance biofuels as one option for the necessary divestment from fossil fuels. Deriving recommendations for national biofuel programs from past performance is no easy task. Context, complexity, power dynamics and scaling pose significant challenges to achieving policy aims. We are nevertheless able to distill a set of sine qua nons (indispensables) for sustainable biofuel governance from the evidence and change management literatures. They are put forward not as recipes for success, but minimum conditions and “best bet” approaches requiring testing, deliberation, and refinement. Perhaps the most fundamental sine qua non is to pursue options that downscale global demand – as current levels of global energy consumption, if only in the transport sector, cannot be met by biomass-derived agrofuels in a way that meets social and environmental sustainability goals.

Keywords: Biofuels; Agrofuels; Sustainability governance; Energy policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421517302392
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:108:y:2017:i:c:p:806-817

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2017.04.013

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().