Bioenergy Development Policy and Practice Must Recognize Potential Hydrologic Impacts: Lessons from the Americas

Bioenergy revamping and complimenting the global environmental legal framework on the reduction of waste materials: A facile review

The challenges posed by climate change/global warming are very alarming, and they have become the focal point of attention for researchers within the global environmental domains. The development of bioenergy can help salvage this situation as a renewable energy source that makes use of recycled waste materials to create useful energy products. This review study found that the development of sustainable bioenergy is environmentally friendly, and it has been proven to be a better means of recycling waste materials into final energy products for sustainable development. The study hereby concluded and recommended that environmental policies concerning the sustainable development of bioenergy should be adopted within the various nations' local laws and the global environment at large, as this will result in adhering strictly to international environmental legal frameworks regulating the prevention and reduction of waste materials. The possible correlation of bioenergy with the Sustainable Development Goals is also highlighted.

Spatial Variation in Environmental Impacts of Sugarcane Expansion in Brazil

In the past decades, sugarcane production in Brazil has expanded rapidly to meet increasing ethanol demand. The large majority of this expansion occurred in Sao Paulo state. We used an integrated approach considering location-specific biophysical characteristics to determine the environmental impacts of sugarcane expansion and their spatial variation in Sao Paulo state (2004–2015). The included environmental impacts are greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, biodiversity, soil erosion, and water quantity. All impacts were integrated into a single environmental performance index to determine trade-offs between impacts. Our results show a strong spatial variation in environmental impacts and trade-offs between them. The magnitude and direction of these impacts are mostly driven by the type of land use change and by the heterogeneity of the biophysical conditions. Areas where expansion of sugar cane has resulted in mostly negative environmental impacts are located in the center and east of the state (related to the change of shrublands, eucalyptus, and forest), while areas where sugar cane expansion has resulted in positive impacts are located in the center-west and north (related to the change of annual crops). Identifying areas with mainly positive and negative impacts enables the development of strategies to mitigate negative effects and enhance positive ones for future sugarcane expansion.

Water impacts of U.S. biofuels: Insights from an assessment combining economic and biophysical models

Biofuels policies induce land use changes (LUC), including cropland expansion and crop switching, and this in turn alters water and soil management practices. Policies differ in the extent and type of land use changes they induce and therefore in their impact on water resources. We quantify and compare the spatially varying water impacts of biofuel crops stemming from LUC induced by two different biofuels policies by coupling a biophysical model with an economic model to simulate the economically viable mix of crops, land uses, and crop management choices under alternative policy scenarios. We assess the outputs of an economic model with a high-resolution crop-water model for major agricultural crops and potential cellulosic feedstocks in the US to analyze the impacts of three alternative policy scenarios on water balances: a counterfactual 'no-biofuels policy' (BAU) scenario, a volumetric mandate (Mandate) scenario, and a clean fuel-intensity standard (CFS) scenario incentivizing fuels based on their carbon intensities. While both biofuel policies incentivize more biofuels than in the counterfactual, they differ in the mix of corn ethanol and advanced biofuels from miscanthus and switchgrass (more corn ethanol in Mandate and more cellulosic biofuels in CFS). The two policies differ in their impact on irrigated acreage, irrigation demand, groundwater use and runoff. Net irrigation requirements increase 0.7% in Mandate and decrease 3.8% in CFS, but in both scenarios increases are concentrated in regions of Kansas and Nebraska that rely upon the Ogallala aquifer for irrigation water. Our study illustrates the importance of accounting for the overall LUC and shifts in agricultural production and management practices in response to policies when assessing the water impacts of biofuels.