Designing Bioenergy Systems for Multiple Environmental Services and Socioeconomic Benefits.

Characterizing conditions under which resource uses are sustainable can be done using indicators to assess and monitor trends over time. Indicators are needed to assess both socioeconomic and environmental sustainability of bioenergy systems.  A team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has selected key indicators of bioenergy sustainability and proposed how they are best used in particular contexts. The proposed environmental and socioeconomic indicators represent a suite designed to reflect major sustainability considerations for bioenergy. We identified major environmental categories of sustainability to be soil quality, water quality and quantity, greenhouse gases, biodiversity, air quality, and productivity and discussed 19 indicators that fit into those categories. We also identified 16 socioeconomic indicators that fall into the categories of social well-being, energy security, trade, profitability, resource conservation, and social acceptability. The utility of each indicator, methods for its measurement, and applications appropriate for the context of particular bioenergy systems are described along with future research needs. Together, this suite of indicators provides a basis to quantify and evaluate sustainability of bioenergy systems across many regions in which they are being deployed.

The importance of interpreting these indicators of bioenergy sustainability in particular contexts is described.  The context of an application strongly affects the choice, measurement and interpretation of sustainability indicators. Context considerations include the purpose of the analysis, the specific fuel production and distribution system, policy influences, stakeholders and their values, baseline attributes, available information, and spatial and temporal scales of interest. Knowing the context is essential for setting priorities for assessment, defining the purpose, setting the temporal and spatial boundaries for consideration, and determining practicality and utility of measures. We present a case study of sustainability indicator collection and integration within the context of a demonstration-scale East Tennessee switchgrass-to-ethanol production system.

The ORNL team has also worked with many others to analyze how agricultural sustainability can consider the effects of farm activities on social, economic, and environmental conditions at local and regional scales. Adoption of more sustainable agricultural practices entails defining sustainability, developing easily measured indicators of sustainability, moving toward integrated agricultural systems, and offering incentives or imposing regulations to affect farmer behavior.