Addressing the contributions of electricity from biomass in Brazil in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals using life cycle assessment methods

Abstract

The implications of bioenergy deployment for sustainable development goals (SDGs) have been gaining importance worldwide, as bioenergy may contribute to other sustainability impacts besides climate change. Decarbonization of the energy sector can promote major co-benefits between Climate Action and other SDGs and lead to important tradeoffs. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methods have been proposed to monitor the SDGs as many of them are closely interconnected but often separately studied.A harmonized application of environmental and social LCA can reveal additional relevant aspects of SDGs. This work proposes an interpretation of combined environmental and socioeconomic LCA impacts by comparing the SDG impacts of electricity from sugarcane biomass with other technological options, which altogether represent 96% of the Brazilian electricity matrix. Our analysis indicates that sugarcane electricity has a higher SDGs score (58 points) compared to coal and oil electricity (42 and 47 points, respectively); however, it is lower than natural gas (78). Sugarcane SDG internal normalization related to the biosphere is very close to natural gas, varying only 3-4 points.On the Economy and Society SDG score, sugarcane electricity is also lower than natural gas. Key areas in sugarcane electricity production that need to be enhanced to better contribute to achieving the SDGs include improving its awareness levels, increasing wages and women representation on the workforce, and promoting measures to decrease work accidents as well as the use of fertilizers and pesticides. This approach may help design specific measures for different value chains for them to significantly contribute to the achievement of SDGs.

Double-cropped Corn Ethanol in Brazil: An existing food-energy system that contributes to multiple Sustainable Development Goals

“…Table S4 presents a list of environmental impact categories. This relationship followed an arbitrary classification criterion, adapting the correlations used in Souza et al ( 2022) 10 (see details in the Supplementary Material). As each category has contributions of different sizes, the total contribution to each SDG was considered as the sum of endpoint-level indicators for each associated category.…”

“…This means that there are few if any integrated analyses that include broad macroeconomic effects, environmental impacts beyond GHG emissions, and threats to food security and low-income populations. Holistic and integrated frameworks based on the SDGs to evaluate projects and policies using LCA and bridging global and regional effects have been developed lately [6][7][8][9][10][11][12] . However, the application of these frameworks is thus far restricted to a few projects and technologies and is still nascent for bioenergy 7,10 .…”

“…Holistic and integrated frameworks based on the SDGs to evaluate projects and policies using LCA and bridging global and regional effects have been developed lately [6][7][8][9][10][11][12] . However, the application of these frameworks is thus far restricted to a few projects and technologies and is still nascent for bioenergy 7,10 . Integrated analysis encompassing multiple sustainable development goals is needed to avoid trading a benefit in one dimension for liability in another [13][14][15][16] .…”

Waste to Energy from Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plants: A Science Mapping

“…However, the use of microalgae has been shown to have significant advantages, as it reduces emissions and leads to energy savings compared to conventional processes [35]. On the other hand, bioelectricity is a renewable and sustainable electricity produced from biomasses [36]. The most recent promising technology for the recovery of energy from wastewater includes microbial fuel cells (MFCs), a bioelectrochemical system (BES) that shows simultaneous power production while treating wastewater, and microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) that recover energy as biogas by treating wastewater [37]; in fact, microbial fuel cell is one of the keywords with the highest co-occurrence value, according to its circle size in Figure 11.…”

Modelling the Optimal Electricity Mix for Togo by 2050 Using OSeMOSYS

“…Electricity being a key sector for development, it is nowadays one of the major concerns and an indispensable parameter for developing countries in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (International Energy Agency et al 2022). It contributes to the reduction of poverty by improving economic development, health, food security, education and environmental protection (Swain & Karimu 2020;Anwar & Elfaki 2021;Syromyatnikov et al 2021;Souza et al 2022;Nguyen et al 2022). The SDGs adopted by the United Nations in 2015, are a global call to action to eliminate poverty, protect the planet and ensure peace and prosperity for all people by 2030 (United Nations 2021).…”