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Life cycle sustainability assessment in the energy sector 119

responsibility (CSR) reporting has gained robustness and widespread adop-
tion over the past decade, with examples including the Global Reporting Ini-
tiative which provides the most widely adopted framework for companies to
track their progress on a variety of sustainability metrics aligned with the UN
SDGs. As of mid-2018, it has received sustainability reporting data from
12,761 organizations, of which 1118 are in the energy sector (GRI, 2018).
Based on initiatives such as those before, there is clear incorporation of
some sustainability principles into strategy, policy, and operations within the
energy sector. However, it is also clear that governments and industry often
base their actions on a limited range of issues, such as climate change and
local pollutants, and that these issues are typically tackled at the level of indi-
vidual power plants or vehicles rather than complete energy life cycles. The
tackling of broader sustainability issues may occur more often via the adop-
tion of general principles and attempts to increase transparency, rather than
by concrete policies and actions. This is perhaps not surprising when con-
sidering the challenge: just as life cycle thinking is recognized as a prerequi-
site for environmental sustainability (Azapagic, 2004), the same holistic view
is needed to ensure broader sustainability (Stamford and Azapagic, 2011).
Combined with the need to address a wide range of issues, this means that
robust decision-making for sustainable development requires that many cri-
teria are accounted for simultaneously.
Fig. 5.2 provides a hypothetical example of a biogas-fired power plant.
As illustrated, when the life cycle of power generation is considered holistic,
a true sustainability assessment must consider a range of issues spanning cli-
mate change, air and water emissions, employment, safety, and others, all of
which vary geographically and temporally throughout the life cycle.
These sustainability issues are particularly broad in the bio-sector due to
its great variety of feedstocks and processing routes: agriculture, for instance,
includes challenges associated with sustainable incomes for farmers, income
distribution, gender equality, exposure to pesticides and other chemicals,
and the results of those chemicals entering the environment, to name only
a few. Therefore in recent years, attempts have been made to consolidate the
key issues for the sector.

1.3 Sustainability issues and indicators
With specific reference to bioenergy, these attempts have resulted in the ISO
13065 standard on Sustainability Criteria for Bioenergy (ISO, 2013a) which
provides a framework for sustainability assessment and reporting via a set of
principles, criteria, and indicators.