Quantifying biodiversity impacts of bioenergy system – Latest developments in the scope of LCA
The growing awareness of the biodiversity crisis has prompted businesses and decision-makers to address biodiversity loss and contribute to the sustainable use of natural resources. To achieve this, governance systems are needed to assist and accelerate the integration of biodiversity considerations into decision-making processes. Currently, sustainability criteria involving biodiversity rarely use life cycle assessment (LCA) approaches due to the more complex nature of assessing biodiversity impacts compared to greenhouse gas emissions. However, the push to consider biodiversity has sparked growing interest in measuring biodiversity impacts using the well-established LCA methodology.
Using LCA approaches to quantify the biodiversity impacts of bioenergy systems requires adequate biodiversity indicators or generic biodiversity measures designed to reflect and track important features of the ecological system. Concrete and quantified biodiversity indicators are useful because they can assess things that would otherwise be difficult or expensive to measure. It is also important that these indicators be relevant to management and policy and interpretable in terms of environmental trends or progress toward policy goals.
This report provides an overview of current progress in assessing biodiversity impacts and using assessment outcomes to inform decisions affecting land-use and land-use change, with a focus on bioenergy systems. It examines research and data relevant to enhancing and adapting LCA to incorporate biodiversity impact assessments enabling analyses of biodiversity – climate trade-offs associated with bioenergy systems. The report leverages the capacity of the project Pathways towards an efficient alignment of the financial system with the needs of biodiversity (BIOPATH), funded by MISTRA – the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research. In addition to the input from the BIOPATH project, the report builds on dedicated knowledge gained at the workshop “Quantifying biodiversity impacts in bioenergy systems”, 13th of June 2024, at the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry (KSLA), Stockholm, and on-line (hybrid event). The workshop included participants from the BIOPATH project, members from IEA Bioenergy Task 45, and international experts within the field.
The report concludes that the absence of a universal biodiversity indicator or the difficulty of measurement should not justify the exclusion of biodiversity assessments and actions related to biomass production systems. While these issues can be perceived as barriers, the use of quantitative tools, such as LCA, undoubtedly provides an opportunity for companies and policymakers to better understand various biomass supply chains when applied coherently. Awareness and control of biomass production systems enables a range of actions to reduce environmental impacts, which are needed to solve the climate and biodiversity crises. Furthermore, the ongoing development of improved biodiversity impact models and the collection of life cycle inventory data based on appropriate biodiversity indicators and remote sensing methodologies will make assessments increasingly applicable.
The report and the slides of the workshop can be downloaded here:
