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258 Biofuels for a More Sustainable Future

order to reduce environmental, social, and economic impacts from a life
cycle perspective.
According to Ekener-Petersen et al. (2014) in a study on biofuels on eth-
anol (Brazilian sugar cane, French wheat, French corn, and US corn), and
rapeseed biodiesel originating in Lithuania, chosen as typical fuels used in the
European Union and Sweden clearly shows that there are risks of substantial
negative social impacts of fossil fuels at the same levels as biofuels. High or
very high risks of negative social impacts are present for all fuel types
included in this study. For Ren et al. (2015), SLCA aims to evaluate a mul-
titude of impacts, ranging from direct impacts on workers to broader LCAs
widely used by society. It investigates social performance at the sector/
industrial level, and there is still little experience with its use and
implementation.
In the systematic review of the literature by Petti et al. (2018), in which
35 case studies on SLCA were considered, in the period 2010 to 2015, pub-
lications were distributed in the following sectors: manufacturing (26%),
agriculture (26%), waste management (21%), energy (24%)—including pho-
tovoltaic and biofuel—and tourism (3%). It was hoped that the scope of the
most interested sectors would be high-risk social and socioeconomic prob-
lems, but the sectors analyzed seem to be areas with a strong environmental
aspect. This is probably due to the fact that 48% of the SLCA case studies are
implemented in developing economies (Africa 15%, Asia 25%, and South
America 8%), while 46% in developed economies.
For Spierling et al. (2018) the SLCA is a fairly young field of research
compared to the assessment of ecological impacts of value chains via LCA
and has been less focused during the last decades of the assessment of life
cycle sustainability. This can be explained by the perception of ecological
aspects and by the complexity of social and economic issues and their
interdependencies.
According to De Luca et al. (2017), SLCA is dedicated to assessing all
kinds of life cycle impacts that affect people. This methodology has not
yet been standardized. There is no consensus on the evaluation process
and there are no unique definitions for SLCA and social impacts. This
has led to a myriad of methodological proposals that differ in many respects,
such as the evaluation perspective, the sources of impacts and what is worth
evaluating (the “impact categories” as referred to in the ACL terminology),
as well as the epistemological foundations.
For SLCA, data are collected through on-site observations and inter-
views with relevant stakeholders. Questionnaires are often used for data