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It has been widely discussed in Brazil that the production of biodiesel should look for ways for increasing competitiveness considering the balance among economic growth, environmental quality and social well-being through the rational use of resources. The main purpose of this paper is to identify structural dimensions influencing sustainability and competitiveness of the Brazilian biodiesel production chain and, thereby, contribute to the current debate as well as to the process of formulating policy and strategies regarding this important supply chain. As starting point, a number of publications were reviewed allowing the identification of main issues and its combination into relevant factors. Eventually, the factors were put together, resulting in a set of structural dimensions: biodiesel supply chain environment, institutional framework, market conditions, monitoring systems and technological innovation. Then, the structural dimensions were summarized in a conceptual model showing the relationship between them. The structural dimensions may be seen as critical points in which stakeholders would pay attention to ensure successful performance and sustainable competitiveness of the biodiesel production chain. The objective of the entire system is to deliver biodiesel as a clean energy with focus on social inclusion, mitigation of environmental impacts and viability.

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In this paper, we discuss perspectives of adopting procedures of metrology, the science of measurements, into sustainability assessments. We present an overview of general concepts of system theory, sustainability, and sustainability metrics. We use these concepts together with the Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement (GUM) metrological approach to include estimation of uncertainties and sensitivity analysis in the model framework to construct aggregated sustainability indicators proposed by Santos and Brandi. To illustrate the method, we apply Canberra distance to study the sustainability of the integration and logistic infrastructure dimension of the biodiesel supply chain in Brazil and Germany. Sustainability has been embodied into government, industries and corporations' policies through standards, conformity assessment, and metrology. This increases the need for sound measurements to address sustainability. To perform sensitivity analysis, we propose an expression to evaluate changes in the sustainability index due to variations in a given indicator, generalizing the linear approximation of the GUM framework. We concluded that metrological procedures can be applied to estimate uncertainties of sustainability systems and their components. Adopting metrological procedures may be an important step to harmonize approaches involving measurements in sustainability systems. Sensitivity analysis provides information about the influence on the sustainability index due to variations of indicators from sustainability systems.

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