Energy Return on Investment (EROI) and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of biofuels in Ecuador

Abstract

In Ecuador, the net energy contribution of biofuels is unknown or unnoticed. To address this issue, we determined the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) for bioethanol and biodiesel.The selection of raw materials relied on their productive capacity, export and import records, and historical yields. Consequently, the scope included three raw materials for ethanol (sugar cane, corn, and forest residues) and four for biodiesel (African palm, pinion, bovine fat, and swine fat).Using a method based on the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of each biofuel, we assessed the entire production chain through statistical processing of primary and secondary information. Then we calculated the calorific values in the laboratory, compared energy inputs/outputs, and finally obtained the energetic returns.EROIs for bioethanol were: 1.797 for sugarcane, 1.040 for corn, and 0.739 for wood. The results for biodiesel were: 3.052 for African palm, 2.743 for pinion, 2.187 for bovine fat, and 2.891 for swine fat. These values suggest feasibility only for sugarcane in the case of ethanol. In contrast, biodiesel has better prospects because all the feedstocks analyzed had EROIs higher than two. Nevertheless, biodiesel is not available for trading in Ecuador because energy policy has overlooked systems based on higher energy return. Future studies should consider more comprehensive variables such as climate change, land use, and water management.

Multiobjective Optimization of Sustainable WCO for Biodiesel Supply Chain Network Design

“…Early work tends to focus on some environmental aspects of the engineering process, such as waste management and net heat consumption [14]. Now, the study of environmental sustainability pays more attention on how to reduce the land, water, and energy consumption, reduce carbon emissions, and reduce pollutant discharge such as carbon emissions and its environmental impact on the global warming problem [15], the use of water resources [16], soil health problems [17], energy return [18], and chemical fertilizer problems [19]. Social sustainability reflected as the development of the bioenergy industry is likely to create new employment opportunities and bring greater economic vitality in rural areas [20][21][22].…”

Bridging the gap – implications of current COVID-19 fiscal rescue and recovery measures

“…While biofuels can have lower life cycle emissions, assessing their merits is complex, as gains towards 'carbon neutrality' depend heavily on their feedstocks and processes, as well as on their direct and indirect emissions, particularly those resulting from land-use change (LUC) from biofuel production. Assuming that biofuel combustion is carbon neutral is therefore a fundamental accounting error that rests on implicit spatiotemporal boundaries and assumptions (Searchinger et al 2009), as for many biofuels, the energy return on investment is comparatively low or possibly negative (Hall, Lambert and Balogh 2014;Chiriboga et al 2020). The availability of land and water is also a key and potentially ethical constraint on the availability of biofuel (Nuffield Council on Bioethics 2011).…”

Availability and Environmental Performance of Wood for a Second-Generation Biorefinery

“…The EROI of 50 is close to the values reported by Romanelli and Milan [50] for Eucalyptus in Brazil. With this information only it is possible to highlight that the current supply chain of wood for a biorefinery has an adequate EROI; however, how this situation can be used depends on the industrial technology because all this favorable EROI may be lost on the biorefinery [79] or improved with new technologies [80].…”