Page 300 - Biofuels for a More Sustainable Future

Social life cycle assessment of biofuel production 265

taken into account. This implies that there is no single answer to the more
sustainable choice between different alternatives. On the contrary, this
depends on different priorities maintained by different stakeholders. An
important contribution of this work is the possibility of evaluating the sus-
tainability of both chains of fossil and renewable fuels in the same tool.
– Nguyen et al. (2017): The article develops a precise methodological
framework for the estimation of the inclusive impact index (Triple I)
based on the current LCSA context. Triple I is a unique quantitative
index for sustainability assessment, which is based on the ecological foot-
print, biocapacity, ecological risk, human risk, cost and benefit under the
life cycle approach. It is applied to evaluate the trade-off between advan-
tages and disadvantages of the biodiesel system. In general, this framework
can promote the application of triple I in the field of biofuels as it provides
several appropriate methods for estimating and suggests that several sce-
narios need to be taken into account.
– Parada et al. (2017): In this paper, sustainability methods and metrics in
current biorefinery project practices are analyzed to identify challenges
and opportunities for future improvements in the field. Generally, there
is a need for comprehensive analysis that includes social impacts and go
beyond the automatic use of metrics for predefined issues. While efforts
have been made to develop more comprehensive sustainability analyzes
for the biorefinery project, they are often challenged by disciplinary
boundaries that generate a narrow scope of analysis and are blind to con-
textual configurations or stakeholder perspectives. Multi- and trans-
disciplinary, inclusive and context-aware approaches are identified as
opportunities to overcome them in future developments.
– Rafiaani et al. (2018): This study proposes a modified systemic approach to
a social sustainability impact assessment of the bio-based economy that
serves industry and policy makers to gain a better insight into the impor-
tance of assessing the impacts of social sustainability within the economy.
The proposed approach follows the four general iteractive SLCA steps and
considers the possible social impacts on local communities, workers, and
consumers as the three major stakeholder groups. The review shows that
the most common social indicators for inventory analysis within the bio-
based economy include health and safety, food security, income, employ-
ment, land and worker concerns, energy security, profitability, and gender
issues. The proposed systemic approach allows integrating the social
impacts that are highly valued by affected stakeholders in existing sustain-
ability models that focus only on environmental and technological aspects.