An integrated assessment of a large-scale biodiesel production in Italy: Killing several birds with one stone?

Russi, Daniela

doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2007.11.016

Cited by 87 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Soybean-based biodiesel production 1 Background, aim and scope Life cycle assessment (LCA) of biofuel production requires a country-specific approach due to the significant importance of local conditions in estimating the energy consumption and the greenhouse gas emissions of the system. Some efforts have been put worldwide to determine countryspecific and raw-material-specific biofuels environmental impact (RFA 2008;Reijnders and Huijbregts 2008;Russi 2008;Zah et al 2007;CONCAWE-EUCAR-JRC 2007;Smith et al 2007;Farrell et al 2006;Gnansounou and Dauriat 2005;VIEWLS 2005;Bernesson et al 2004;Elsayed et al 2003;ADEME 2002;GM-LBST 2002;Sheehan et al 1998). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessment of soybean-based biodiesel in Argentina for export

Panichelli

Dauriat²,

Gnansounou

2008

Int J Life Cycle Assess

155

113

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Background, aim and scope Regional specificities are a key factor when analyzing the environmental impact of a biofuel pathway through a life cycle assessment (LCA). Due to different energy mixes, transport distances, agricultural practices and land use changes, results can significantly vary from one country to another. The Republic of Argentina is the first exporter of soybean oil and meal and the third largest soybean producer in the world, and therefore, soybean-based biodiesel production is expected to significantly increase in the near future, mostly for exportation. Moreover, Argentinean biodiesel producers will need to evaluate the environmental performances of their product in order to comply with sustainability criteria being developed. However, because of regional specificities, the environmental performances of this biofuel pathway can be expected to be different from those obtained for other countries and feedstocks previously studied. This work aims at analyzing the environmental impact of soybean-based biodiesel production in Argentina for export. The relevant impact categories account for the primary non-renewable energy consumption (CED), the global warming potential (GWP), the eutrophication potential (EP), the acidification potential (AP), the terrestrial ecotoxicity (TE), the aquatic ecotoxicity (AE), the human toxicity (HT) and land use competition (LU). The paper tackles the feedstock and country specificities in biodiesel production by comparing the results of soybean-based biodiesel in Argentina with other reference cases. Emphasis is put on explaining the factors that contribute most to the final results and the regional specificities that lead to different results for each biodiesel pathway. Materials and methods The Argentinean (AR) biodiesel pathway was modelled through an LCA and was compared with reference cases available in the ecoinvent® 2.01 database, namely, soybean-based biodiesel production in Brazil (BR) and the United States (US), rapeseed-based biodiesel production in the European Union (EU) and Switzerland (CH) and palm-oil-based biodiesel production in Malaysia (MY). In all cases, the systems were modelled from feedstock production to biodiesel use as B100 in a 28 t truck in CH. Furthermore, biodiesel pathways were compared with fossil low-sulphur diesel produced and used in CH. The LCA was performed according to the ISO standards. The life cycle inventory and the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) were performed in Excel spreadsheets using the ecoinvent® 2.01 database. The cumulative energy demand (CED) and the GWP were estimated through the CED for fossil and nuclear energy and the IPCC 2001 (climate change) LCIA methods, respectively. Other impact categories were assessed according to CML 2001, as implemented in ecoinvent. As the product is a fuel for transportation (service), the system was defined for one vehicle kilometre (functional unit) and was divided into seven unit processes, namely, agricultural phase, soybean oil extraction and refining, transesteri...

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessment of soybean-based biodiesel in Argentina for export

Panichelli

Dauriat²,

Gnansounou

2008

Int J Life Cycle Assess

155

113

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“…Thus, more research is needed to study this field in greater depth. In relation to deforestation, the high demands of productive soil in large-scale production of biofuels would produce deforestation especially in tropical forests (Russi, 2008). On the other hand, the small scale production plant presented here deals with a small portion of the amount of available land to produce biofuel, thus avoiding the abovementioned impact.…”

Section: Environmental Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Europe the most common biofuels in transport are biodiesel and bioethanol. These biofuels are mostly obtained from large-scale plants and its production involves serious environmental and social problems as shown by several authors (Russi, 2008;Galan et al, 2009). In this scenario it is necessary to implement other biofuels currently not present in the Spanish market.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of Rapeseed Straight Vegetable Oil as Fuel Produced in Small-Scale Exploitations

Baquero¹,

Esteban²,

Riba³

et al. 2011

Biofuel's Engineering Process Technology

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“…The international discussion pays little attention to the territorial dimension of biofuel production and, thus, to the relations between biofuel production chains and territorial organisation at different spatial scales (Puttilli, 2009;Puttilli and Tecco, 2012 Amigun et al (2011);Azar and Larson (2000); Carrosio (2013); Colbran (2011);Cotula (2012);Dalla Marta et al (2011);Dauvergne and Neville (2010);de Carvalho and Marin (2011);Duvail et al (2012);Fernandes et al (2010); Gao et al (2011);Gupta and Dermibas (2010); Hazlewood (2012); Levidow and Paul (2010); Montefrio and Sonnenfeld (2013); Naylor (2007); Jensen and Andersen (2013); Pérez et al (2011);Ponti and Gutierrez (2009);Rathmann et al (2010); Rowe et al (2009);Russi (2008); Sawyer (2008); Sullivan et al (2011);Tsao et al (2012); Vermeulen and Cotula (2010); Williams et al (2012); Zeller and Grass (2008) more attention to be paid to the geographies of the energy transition. In particular, location, landscape, territoriality, spatial differentiation, scaling and spatial embeddedness are identified by these authors as necessary concepts to reflect the spatiality of energy transitions, which is too often analysed as single case studies.…”

Section: The Territorial Dimension and The Spatial Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This model creates ecological impacts and contradictions relating to environmental, socio-economic and geopolitical aims (Ponti and Gutierrez, 2009;Russi, 2008). Various studies, referring particularly to first-generation biofuels but also to biogas produced according to a profit logic and without connections to local communities (Carrosio, 2013), show the impacts on environmental and socio-economic organisation (Altieri, 2009;de Carvalho and Marin, 2011;Naylor, 2007;Sawyer, 2008).…”

Section: The Impact Of the Global Industrial Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%