Received Date : 27-Aug-2015

Revised Date : 15-Dec-2015

Accepted Article
Accepted Date : 18-Dec-2015

Article type : Research Review

Bioenergy production and sustainable development: science base

for policy-making remains limited

Authors: Carmenza Robledo-Abad1,2*, H.J. Althaus3,4, G. Berndes5, S. Bolwig6, E. Corbera7, F.

Creutzig8, J. Garcia-Ulloa9, A. Geddes10, J. S. Gregg6, H. Haberl11, S. Hanger10, 22, R.J. Harper12, C.
Hunsberger13, R. K. Larsen14, Ch. Lauk11, S. Leitner11, J. Lilliestam10, H. Lotze-Campen15, 23, B. Muys16,
M. Nordborg5, M. Ölund21, B. Orlowsky17, A. Popp15, J. Portugal-Pereira18, J. Reinhard19, L. Scheiffle15,
P. Smith20,

Affiliations:
1
Department of Environmental Systems Science, USYS TdLab, ETH Zürich, Universitätstrasse 22,
8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
2
Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation, Maulbeerstr. 10, CH-3001, Bern, Switzerland.
3
Foundation for Global Sustainability (ffgs), Reitergasse 11, 8004 Zürich, Switzerland.
4
Lifecycle Consulting Althaus, Bruechstr. 132, 8706 Meilen, Switzerland
5
Department of Energy and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
6
DTU Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Roskilde, Denmark
7
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, and Department of Economics & Economic
History, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.
8
Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change & Technical University Berlin,
Germany.
9
Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems, ETH Zürich, Universitätstrasse 22 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
10
Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zürich, Climate Policy Group, Universitätstrasse 22,
8092 Zurich, Switzerland.

This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not
been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may
lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as
doi: 10.1111/gcbb.12338
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 11
Institute of Social Ecology Vienna (SEC), Alpen-Adria Universitaet (AAU), Schottenfeldgasse 29,
1070 Vienna, Austria.
12
School of Veterinary and Life Sciences, Murdoch University, South Street, Murdoch, Western
Accepted Article
Australia 6150, Australia
13
Department of Geography, University of Western Ontario. London, Ontario N6A 5C2, Canada.
14
Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Linnégatan 87D, 115 23 Stockholm, Postbox 24218, 104 51
Stockholm Sweden.
15
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), PO Box 601203, 14412 Potsdam, Germany.
16
Division of Forest, Nature and Landscape, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Celestijnenlaan 200E
box 2411, BE- 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
17
climate-babel.org, Aarau, Switzerland
18
Energy Planning Program, COPPE, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Centro de Tecnologia, Sala
C-211, C.P. 68565, Cidade Universitária, Ilha do Fundão 21941-972 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil.
19
Informatics and Sustainability Research Group, Swiss Federal Institute for Material Testing and
Research, Empa, Ueberlandstrasse 129, 8600 Duebendorf, Switzerland
20
Institute of Biological & Environmental Sciences, ClimateXChange and Scottish Food Security
Alliance-Crops, University of Aberdeen, 23 St Machar Drive, Aberdeen AB24 3UU, Scotland, UK
21
Centre for Environment and Sustainability – GMV, University of Gothenburg, Aschebergsgatan 44 Göteborg,
Sweden.
22
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Schlossplatz 1, Laxenburg, Austria
23
Humboldt-University zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany

*Corresponding author: Carmenza Robledo-Abad, Tel: +41 (44) 632 58 92, Mobile: +41 (76) 384 34
46, E-mail: [email protected]

Running head: Bioenergy production and sustainable development

Key words: bioenergy, sustainable development, food security, mitigation, agriculture, forestry

Paper type: Invited review

Abstract

The possibility of using bioenergy as a climate change mitigation measure has sparked a discussion
of whether and how bioenergy production contributes to sustainable development. We undertook a
systematic review of the scientific literature to illuminate this relationship and found a limited
scientific basis for policy-making. Our results indicate that knowledge on the sustainable

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 development impacts of bioenergy production is concentrated in a few well-studied countries,
focuses on environmental and economic impacts, and mostly relates to dedicated agricultural
biomass plantations. The scope and methodological approaches in studies differ widely and only a
Accepted Article
small share of the studies sufficiently reports on context and/or baseline conditions, which makes it
difficult to get a general understanding of the attribution of impacts. Nevertheless we identified
regional patterns of positive or negative impacts for all categories – environmental, economic,
institutional, social and technological. In general, economic and technological impacts were more
frequently reported as positive, while social and environmental impacts were more frequently
reported as negative (with the exception of impacts on direct substitution of GHG emission from
fossil fuel). More focused and transparent research is needed to validate these patterns and develop
a strong science underpinning for establishing policies and governance agreements that
prevent/mitigate negative and promote positive impacts from bioenergy production.

Introduction

During the last decades developed and developing countries have introduced policies to encourage
the use of bioenergy including i.a. the Brazilian National Alcohol Program (ProAlcool), the US
Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED), the Alternative Energy
Development Plan (AEDP) in Thailand, and the Indian National Policy on Biofuels (Sorda et al., 2010).
The promotion of bioenergy as a climate change mitigation measure has sparked a intensive
discussion concerning potential impacts on sustainable development. Commonly mentioned positive
impacts focus on opportunities for new uses of land, economic growth, climate change mitigation,
increased energy security and employment (Smeets et al., 2007; Nijsen et al., 2012; Mendes Souza et
al., 2015). On the other hand, there are concerns about potential disruption to food security and
rural livelihoods, direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land use change,
enhanced water scarcity, ecological impacts, increased rural poverty, and displacement of small-
scale farmers, pastoralists and forest users (Dauvergne and Neville, 2010; Delucchi, 2010; German et
al., 2011; Gamborg et al., 2014; Hejazi et al., 2015).

How bioenergy interacts with sustainable development has become a key scientific question as
demand for bioenergy increases globally. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) Working Group III contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report (WGIII AR5) highlights the
relationship between context conditions, the use of bioenergy as a mitigation option, and the
impacts on sustainable development. Discussing impacts of bioenergy on sustainable development,
the IPCC WGIII AR5 concludes that “…the nature and extent of the impacts of implementing
bioenergy depend on the specific system, the development context, and on the size of the
intervention” (Smith et al., 2014).

Different case studies have documented that expanding production of the crops most commonly
used to produce bioenergy can affect local incomes, food security, land tenure, or health in positive
and negative ways, and that the outcomes of bioenergy production can be unequally distributed
(Tilman et al., 2009; Persson, 2014). Model-based assessments have tried to integrate sustainability
considerations, pointing out likely interactions between bioenergy and food prices as well as
biodiversity and water use(Popp et al., 2011; Lotze-Campen et al., 2014; Scharlemann and Laurence,
2014). However, the effects of bioenergy on livelihoods and the role of governance agreements in

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 promoting or mitigating specific types of impact have not yet been included in modelling exercises
(Ackerman et al., 2009; Lubowski and Rose, 2013; Creutzig et al., 2014; Smith et al., 2014).
Furthermore, previous studies have concluded that more clarity about the relationships between
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bioenergy production, livelihoods, and equity is still needed (Hodbod and Tomei, 2013; Creutzig et
al., 2013; Hunsberger et al., 2014).
In light of the urgent need for action on climate change (IPCC, 2014), persistent economic and social
inequalities, and intensifying competition for land (Lambin and Meyfroidt, 2011; Haberl, 2015), there
is a need for science-based policy making with respect to the impacts of bioenergy on sustainable
development. We have examined the scientific evidence base for such policy making in a
comprehensive systematic review using the scientific literature produced in the time period covered
by the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.

Methodology for reviewing impacts of bioenergy production on sustainable development

The aim of this systematic review was to analyse the state of knowledge about how the production
of bioenergy resources affects sustainable development. This is key for understanding to what
extent the existent knowledge can provide advice for policy makers. The systematic review focuses
on the following impact categories: social, economic, institutional, environmental, and technological
(including food security and human health as social). The review is based on the assumption that if
production of a bioenergy resource impacts any of the focus categories it also impacts sustainable
development. Thus analysing the reported impacts on these focus categories will facilitate an
overview of the state of knowledge regarding the impacts from bioenergy production on sustainable
development.

We followed the steps included in the methodological guidance for systematic reviews by (Petticrew
and Roberts, 2008; Bartolucci and Hillegass, 2010). The review protocol that served as
methodological basis included five steps: 1) definition of scope and aims; 2) research questions; 3)
search for and selection of evidence; 4) quality appraisal; 5) data extraction and synthesis (see
detailed protocol of the systematic review in the supplementary material).
We investigated to what extent the scientific community has answered the following questions
which are of high interest in various contexts, including policy, in which decisions on future
implementation of bioenergy are decided upon: Where do sustainable development impacts from
bioenergy production take place? What is the evidence for the purported impacts? How are impacts
attributed and measured? Are there certain context conditions that enable the observed impacts?
Are the reported impacts specific to particular biomass resources? These questions were motivated
by the discussions addressed in AR5, WGIII (Smith et al., 2014, annex on bioenergy). Although the
AR5 considers impacts on sustainable development, it does not provide a geographically
differentiated analysis or an understanding of the relation between context conditions and impacts.
Several authors (Creutzig et al., 2014; Smith et al., 2014; Bustamante et al., 2014; Stechow et al.,
2015) explicitly highlight the need for improving the understanding of regional distribution of
mitigation impacts on sustainable development, disaggregating by technologies and bioenergy
inputs and under consideration of context conditions. The aim of this article was to make a first step
in this direction through a stringent systematic review.

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 We used the same time frame for scientific publications as the Fifth IPCC Assessment report (AR5)
(see supplementary information for the selection criteria and process) and went into a far more
detailed analysis with regard to the questions reported above.
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The AR5 defines bioenergy as “energy derived from any form of biomass such as recently living
organisms or their metabolic by-products” (Allwood et al., 2014). We include nine biomass resources
in the review: forest residues, unutilized forest growth, dedicated biomass forest plantations,
combined forest sources, agriculture residues, dedicated biomass agricultural plantations, organic
waste, combined agricultural resources and combined forest and agricultural resources (see protocol
in the supplementary information for specific definition of each biomass resource). As the focus of
the research was to understand the impacts from production and collection of these biomass
resources on development, we did not distinguish the technologies used for producing bioenergy
from biomass (i.e. first or second generation) but considered the demand that both technologies can
create on biomass resources.
We acknowledge that there is no general agreement on how to measure impacts on sustainable
development (Sneddon et al., 2006; Muys, 2013). Thus, we based the systematic review on the
development impacts as outlined in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) chapter of
the IPCC WGIII AR5 (Smith et al., 2014). We considered a set of 33 potential impacts on sustainable
development structured into five impact categories: institutional, social and health-related,
environmental, economic and technological (see Tables SI3 and SI4). We assumed that if production
of a bioenergy resource affects any of these impact categories, it also affects sustainable
development. Thus, analysing the reported impacts in a systematic manner provides an overview of
the state of knowledge regarding how bioenergy production affects sustainable development as
defined above.
Selection of studies and data extraction
The selection process was done in three steps: definition of search criteria, a search in two scientific
collections and a quality appraisal. For the search criteria we included thirty inclusion criteria
covering all five development categories and two further criteria on bioenergy forms for a set of
sixty inclusion criteria combinations; and we included 12 exclusion criteria (see “article selection and
data extraction” in the protocol included in the supplementary information for further details). We
further refined the selection using 31 categories of Web of Science, including 12 research areas. We
limited the search to articles in English. The search was conducted in the Web of Science and in
Science Direct including all their data bases. This procedure yielded a wide and inclusive sample of
1175 articles covering all five development categories. For the quality appraisal we randomly
selected a subset of articles (n=873 or 74.3% of the original sample), which makes the sub-sample
representative. Only 541 of these passed the quality appraisal (criteria and procedure for the
appraisal is clarified in the “quality appraisal” section in the protocol included in the supplementary
information). 408 articles out of the 541 (75.4%) were randomly included in the data extraction and
the research team carefully reviewed all articles. During the data extraction, we removed 92 articles
because none of the 33 potential impacts included in our list were discussed, although they did
discuss issues belonging to the five categories (that explains why these articles passed the quality
appraisal). Thus, the results presented below are based on the analysis of the detailed data
extracted from 316 original research articles that discuss at least one of the 33 impacts included.

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 Data analysis
We analysed the data in three steps: (1) characterization of the study, (2) consideration of the
context conditions in the area of the study and (3) reported impacts. Exploratory data analysis
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revealed a vast heterogeneity of how data were gathered, impacts attributed, and results reported
in the 316 analysed articles (see detailed counting of results in the supplementary information, file
impacts trees). This heterogeneity combined with the number of variables mostly precluded the use
of sophisticated statistical analysis methods, and our analysis is mainly based on descriptive tables
and cross-tabulations, combining data from all three steps. The statistical significance of potentially
interesting relations between context conditions and impacts was analysed using Fisher-tests (R
Core Team, 2014).

Results
Almost half of the articles in the systematic review analyse impacts from dedicated biomass
plantations (agriculture and forestry), while few articles examine the sustainable development
impacts from using agricultural or forestry residues (4 and 6%, respectively), or organic waste (2.5%)
(see Table SI 10). Although several studies report that the use of organic waste as bioenergy
feedstock can be associated with positive or low negative impacts, and hence considered an
attractive bioenergy resource (Gregg and Smith, 2010; Odlare et al., 2011; Haberl et al., 2011), but
the evidence in our review is insufficient to object or support this proposition as too few studies
analyse this resource.

Different places, different state of knowledge

Our results show an uneven geographical distribution of the studies, with most articles focusing on
developed regions: 26.7% on Europe, and 26.3% on North America; compared to only 13.1% on Asia,
8.2% on Africa, 7.8% on Latin America (Central and South America), 2.2% on Oceania; 15.7% of the
studies conduct global analyses (Figure 2, Table SI 11). This distribution contrasts with the share of
annual plant biomass production (approximated through Net Primary Production or NPP) of these
regions: 16% in Europe, 12% in North America, 19% in Asia, 20% in Africa, 26% in Latin America and
6% in Oceania (Krausmann et al., 2013). Although a multitude of socioeconomic and natural factors
influence any region’s technical or economic bioenergy potential, we consider NPP a useful proxy for
its biophysical suitability for biomass production (Haberl et al., 2013). Modelling and empirical data
suggest that current NPP levels may underestimate achievable productivities in human managed
systems (DeLucia et al., 2014), but should be viewed in the perspective of scales of cultivation
required for bioenergy to make an important contribution to the future energy supply, and also
possible ecological impacts of high-input cultivation systems (Haberl, 2016).
Table 1 is divided into three categories of countries: i) well-studied key countries, (section A in Table
1); ii) potentially relevant but understudied countries, i.e., countries with high NPP but few, if any,
studies (section B in Table 1); and iii) relatively over-studied countries, i.e., countries with low NPP
and hence a relatively minor global contribution to the global bioenergy potential but nevertheless
with many studies associated with them (section C in Table 1).

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 The small share of studies considering impacts on sustainability in developing regions is surprising, as
studies assessing global bioenergy potential commonly point to some of the countries in section B as
possible large future suppliers of biomass and biofuels (Nijsen et al., 2012; Hoogwijk et al., 2009;
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Smeets and Faaij, 2010; Beringer et al., 2011; Haberl et al., 2011). For example, in Latin America,
only Brazil (contributing 26 cases or 74% to the studies in countries of this region) emerges as a focal
point of the scientific literature, while the number of country-specific studies in other countries is
small (three studies in Argentina and one study each in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico and
Peru). Hence, of the 20 countries in Latin America, only one country with a large NPP is well-studied,
whereas six countries are under-studied despite their large potential. Extrapolations of impacts from
the local/national to the regional level are thus not yet possible.
When looking at which impacts have been considered and where, our results show that most
regions focus on the environmental and economic categories and barely consider social impacts with
the exception of food security (see Figure 1 and Table 2). Only studies focusing on Asia and Africa
show a more balanced interest across categories.
Only a small number of impacts have been studied across regions
Beyond the impact categories we further analysed which specific impacts were most frequently
considered in each region (see Table 3). Studies at the global level focus on impacts on displacement
of activities, on deforestation or forest degradation, on soil and water, on food security and on GHG
emissions. To a lesser extent, but nevertheless important, global studies look at market
opportunities, feedstock prices and technology development and transfer.

The regional distribution of the interest in specific impacts is uneven. In North America (mainly USA)
impacts from the environmental category are included among the seven most frequent followed by
impacts on prices of feedstock and on market opportunities from the economic category. The three
most frequently analysed impacts in Europe and Latin America (mainly Brazil) are those on
displacement of activities, on soil and water, and on direct substitution of GHG emissions from fossil
fuels. Studies from Oceania only consider six impacts; four of them in the environmental category
with the most frequently analysed being impacts on soil and water.
The distribution of analysed impacts in Africa and Asia is more balanced. Most of the impacts have
been considered in these two regions, suggesting a better engagement with the complexity of
understanding sustainability impacts or an expectation that social impacts are relatively more
important in these regions. The five impacts most often considered in Africa are impacts on food
security, on energy independence, on economic activity, on employment and on poverty (in this
order). In this region, impacts on land tenure, on women and on capacity building are considered
more often than in other regions. The five impacts most frequently considered in Asia are those on
food security, on economic activity, on soil and water, on displacement of activities and on
employment.
Unbalanced understanding about impacts on sustainable development
The perspective of whether impacts are positive, negative or neutral is also uneven across regions.
Our analysis of a selection of impacts shows that mostly negative impacts are reported in Latin
America and at the global level, while the other regions show a more balanced picture (see Tables

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 3). The more detailed analysis presented below shows interesting differences in the importance
given to each category and on where specific impacts were assessed as positive or negative.
Institutional impacts are included in over 30% of the articles (see Table 2). Within this impact
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category, energy independence is the most frequently studied impact across regions, especially in
Europe and Africa, and biofuel deployment is reported mostly as having a positive impact on it.
Other impacts in this category such as cross-sectorial coordination show mixed results for all regions,
while land tenure was reported as negatively impacted in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Social impacts are considered in over 30% of all studies, with food security being the most frequently
addressed impact in this category (over 25% of the total studies and almost 75% of the articles
considering social impacts). We undertook a detailed analysis of food security because it has been
mentioned as one major concern for promoting deployment of bioenergy. Negative impacts on food
security were reported twice as often as positive impacts. For all regions impacts on food security
are reported more often as negative than as positive, except in Africa where an equal number of
studies report impacts as positive, negative or neutral (see Figure 2 and Table 3).
In addition, we found that at the global level, the more often models are used for analysing impacts
on food security, the higher the frequency of negative impacts (see Figure 2). Although the small
number of studies does not provide statistic robustness, this finding suggests a difference in the way
impacts on food security are modelled or measured at the global level.
Other key social impacts – including gender and intra-generational impacts, social conflicts,
displacement of farmers, and impacts on traditional or indigenous practices – are insufficiently
studied in all regions, and practically not considered in global studies.
The environmental impacts category is the most frequently considered category by the studies in the
sample (over 70% of the total articles in the review, see Table 2), and each individual impact is
addressed by at least a quarter of the studies. Across regions all impacts in this category are
reported as mostly negative or neutral, with the exception of direct substitution of GHG emissions
from fossil fuels, which is considered positive or neutral in all geographical contexts. It is important
to note, however, that over 65% of the studies used models for attributing direct substitution of
GHG emissions from fossil fuels, and only 20% of these combined models with case study
measurements. Thus the qualification of this impact is highly dependent on the system boundaries
and attribution criteria used. Negative impacts on the displacement of activities or other land uses
are more frequently reported in Latin America, North America, Europe, and at the global level (see
Table 3). In Asia, slightly more positive impacts are reported compared to other regions.
Impacts on biodiversity are predominately reported as negative or neutral (see Table 3), except in a
few studies from Europe and North America, whereas impacts on deforestation or forest
degradation seem to be more negative for Latin America and at the global level. Further, impacts
from the use of fertilizers on soil and water are reported as negative for Europe, North and Latin
America, where these account for the majority of studies addressing this issue.
Economic impacts are considered in over half of all articles (see Table 2), and were predominantly
positive for most impacts assessed in this category. Positive effects on market opportunities are
noticeably reported in studies for North America and Europe (see Table 3), whereas positive effects
on economic activity were more frequently reported in Africa and Asia. Impacts on prices of
feedstock show mixed results for all regions. As for other impacts where modelling was used far

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 more often than case study measurements, the positive or negative character of the economic
impacts category needs more analysis considering the system boundaries and attribution criteria
used.
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Over 20% of all articles consider technological impacts (see Table 2). Technology development and
transfer is the most frequently considered impact, followed distantly by impacts on labour demand,
infrastructure coverage and access to infrastructure. Impacts on technology development and
transfer are seen mostly as positive in all regions with only two studies reporting negative impacts:
one from Africa and one at the global level (see Table 3).
How context conditions influence development outcomes remains unclear
We analysed how impacts have been attributed by examining whether context conditions were
explicitly reported. Context conditions describe the situation in the absence of additional biomass
production and use for energy. Insight into these conditions is necessary for establishing a baseline
or reference scenario and/or for attributing impacts on sustainable development from bioenergy
production in a transparent manner. The systematic review includes 31 possible conditions that can
describe the context in relation to the five impact categories (see supplementary information for a
complete list of context conditions). We first analysed the extent to which impacts reported in the
articles match to the corresponding context conditions at the level of category (i.e., whether context
conditions were reported for those categories where impacts were identified).
The analysis shows that only 13.6% of the articles comprehensively describe the context conditions
against the category of the reported impacts, whereas 23% do not report context conditions at all.
For the remainder, conditions were partially or fully mismatched (i.e., context conditions are
described but not for the category of impacts reported). This lack of clarity of the context conditions
applies to articles dealing with developed and developing countries, as well as global analyses.
However, we found that studies analysing bioenergy production in developing countries report
context conditions more often than studies on Europe, North America or those with a global scope
(see Figure 3). The lack of information applies across all reported impacts. For instance, from those
articles quantifying impacts on food security, only 35% provide context conditions in the
corresponding social category; concerning GHG emissions only 12% of articles provide corresponding
baseline conditions. We recognize that for some standardized methodologies (e.g., LCA), and for
most models, certain assumptions regarding context conditions are embedded in the procedures
used. However, when they are not reported and/or validated, which is often the case, it remains
unclear how impacts were attributed.
We undertook a deeper analysis of the relationship between context conditions and several specific
impacts. Initially, we conducted a descriptive analysis of impacts on food security, which is the most
frequently reported social impact, to determine if it is possible to establish the context conditions
that trigger positive or negative impacts on food security. 80% of the articles mentioning impacts on
food security include some description of the context conditions. We found that in articles reporting
impact on food security, most context conditions are considered at least once (see Figure 4) and that
no particular context condition clearly stands out in relation to either positive or negative impacts
(e.g., conditions that are most frequent in the food security analysis, such as the use of modern
technologies, show up both for negative and positive impacts).

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 The general lack of correlation between context conditions and impact sign is also reflected in the p-
values of Fisher-tests, which we applied to all 1023 combinations of context conditions and impacts
to check the influence of a particular context condition given or not given on the counts of impact
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signs. Table 4 displays that only 5 combinations have a p-value below 5% and reports their
corresponding numbers of condition-impact combinations.
The Fisher-test indicates if the counts of impact signs in case of condition being “yes” differs
significantly from the counts of impact signs when the condition is “no”. Thus, a low p-value does
not represent strong evidence that the condition has an influence on the impact. This influence can
only be postulated if the combination of conditions and impact also suggests its existence and
direction. This is the case for only two combinations:
 Combination 1  context condition “ existing deficits in food access and /or food security”
and impact on “food security”: When the context condition “existing deficits in food access
and/or supply” is given, then biomass production for bioenergy is almost exclusively reported
to have a negative impact on food security. Studies reporting the absence of these deficits, on
the other hand, report either a positive or a neutral impact on food security.
 Combination 2  context condition “benefit sharing mechanism for economic benefits are in
place” and impact on “direct substitution of GHG emissions from fossil fuels”: The impact on
direct substitution of GHG emissions from fossil fuel is largely positive when no benefit-
sharing mechanism for economic benefits are in place, while the presence of such
mechanisms exclusively leads to this impact being negative.
For the other three combinations in Table 4, the number of impacts is very small if the condition is
answered with “no” and the distribution of impacts (positive, negative or neutral) is ambiguous.
Thus, even if the condition being “yes” suggests a positive impact sign in two of these cases, it is not
known if these conditions really influence the corresponding impacts.
The regional analysis for the two combinations that in total suggest a correlation between condition
and impact are displayed in Table 5. Fisher-tests showed no significant difference between “yes” and
“no” answers for any region.
Patterns in the distribution of positive and negative impacts
The results show some general patterns that are worth highlighting (see especially Figures 2, 3 and 4
and Table 3). Impacts on some economic and technological categories are persistently positive
across studies and regions. Within these categories impacts on energy independence, direct
substitution of GHG emissions from fossil fuels, market opportunities, economic activity and
diversification, employment as well as different technological categories are far most often reported
as positive. In contrast, most impacts in the social and environmental categories are reported largely
as having negative impacts, especially on land tenure, food security, displacement of other activities,
biodiversity loss, and conflict and social tension. These patterns indicate an important trade-off: that
bioenergy projects may generate positive economic impacts but negative environmental and social
impacts.
The incomplete information on context conditions (Figure 3 and statistical analysis) makes it difficult to say
anything conclusively across studies on what are the most relevant conditions triggering any specific impact.
Yet, previous work has pointed to some reasons worth highlighting, notably that government institutions in
countries targeted for bioenergy production often face severe constraints in implementing public policies and
regulations intended to protect, for instance, land rights and food security (Ravnborg et al., 2013; Larsen et al.,

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 2014). This is reinforced by our findings on context conditions related to food security and to some extent by the
participation of governance related conditions highlighted through the Fisher-Test. It is also worth noting that
since climate change mitigation has been an important motivator for promoting bioenergy, it has been a higher
research priority than other goals such as those related to biodiversity or land tenure. The latest IPCC
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Assessment Report made a great advance in including ethics and sustainable development in its considerations
and paves the way for a more systemic research approach towards understanding development impacts from
bioenergy production. More research is needed in the future to develop this approach, given the knowledge gaps
identified in this review.

Conclusions and outlook

Understanding the impacts of bioenergy production on sustainable development has been an

important research topic in recent years, but its coverage is uneven, both in terms of geographical
coverage, feedstocks considered, and in the categories of impacts considered. Furthermore, results
are hardly comparable because context conditions and attribution criteria are not properly reported
in the majority of the studies.
In the following we present our conclusions about the research questions in this review.
Where do sustainable development impacts from bioenergy production take place?
Geographically, we identified three distinct groups of countries, based on NPP as a proxy for
biophysical biomass production potential, for considering bioenergy deployment in a given country.
In the first group we find countries with a high biophysical potential and a reasonable number of
studies. These studies give good information about environmental and economic impacts, showing a
tendency towards positive impacts from bioenergy production on direct substitution of GHG
emissions from fossil fuels, market creation, technology development and transfer. However social,
institutional and technological impacts remain uncertain because they were far less often
considered. The second group comprises countries with a high NPP but very few studies. Most of
these are developing countries where there is a need for better understanding of possible
sustainable development impacts of bioenergy implementation. For countries in this group, more
research is needed to provide robust information for policy-making and governance agreements.
The third group comprises countries with a relatively smaller NPP but many studies. This group
consists mainly of developed countries and lessons on methodological issues from these studies can
be used for future research in understudied countries.

What is the evidence for the purported impacts and how are impacts attributed and measured?
There is a lack of systematic reporting on criteria for attributing impacts. Despite the existing
discussion on attribution of specific methodologies (e.g. Finkbeiner, 2013; Muñoz et al., 2015 on
attribution of indirect land use change in LCA), this omission in the studies makes it impossible to
pursue a consistent comparison of results. We found that the environmental and economic impact
categories were more thoroughly studied whereas far less is known about how bioenergy
production will affect the social and institutional categories of sustainable development. Institutional
and social impact categories are better considered in country-level studies than in global studies.
Although there is an apparent indication of trade-offs between positive impacts on the economic
category and negative impacts on the environmental and social categories, more clarity about what

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 triggers the trade-offs could not be achieved due to the non-comparability of the results across the
studies (lack of attribution criteria) and to the lack of information on context conditions in the
majority of the studies.
Accepted Article
Are there certain context conditions that enable the observed impacts?
We found that there is a gap on reporting the specific context conditions prior to any intervention
aimed at producing biomass for bioenergy, with less than 15% of the studies providing a
comprehensive presentation of the context conditions in the category on which they attributed
impacts. The lack of consistency in reporting context conditions and their relation to the reported
impacts prevents clear and definitive conclusions on how the context affects the development
outcome. Previous assessments have highlighted the need for “good governance” as a condition
required for promoting positive impacts of bioenergy production (Creutzig et al., 2014; Smith et al.,
2014; Hunsberger et al., 2014). The reported negative impacts on land tenure, food security and
food production, or other social and institutional aspects bear witness that bioenergy deployment
can result in undesirable consequences and on the importance of understanding the context
conditions, especially existing governance of natural resources.
Are the reported impacts specific to particular biomass resources?
We found a concentration of studies dealing with dedicated biomass production, especially
agricultural plantations. Other biomass resources have been less studied and the use of waste as
bioenergy feedstock has not received much systematic scrutiny. We conclude that analytical
frameworks and methods that facilitate the analysis at a higher level of complexity, i.e., including
more categories or allowing aggregation from various studies, are still needed. Such frameworks
need to ask for the inclusion and reporting of context conditions, explicitly and transparently, so that
context-dependent differences can be identified. Future empirical research, especially case studies,
should aim to inform about the most effective governance arrangements – and identify situations
where governance agreements have insufficient capacity to guarantee that bioenergy deployment
consider international due diligence standards.
It is opportune to interpret our results in the context of the recent IPCC assessment of climate
change. The IPCC author team concluded that:

“One strand of literature highlights that bioenergy could contribute significantly to

mitigating global GHG emissions via displacing fossil fuels, better management of natural
resources, and possibly by deploying BECCS. Another strand of literature points to abundant
risks in the large-scale development of bioenergy mainly from dedicated energy crops and
particularly in reducing the land carbon stock, potentially resulting in net increases in GHG
emissions” (Smith et al, 2014)

One interpretation of this divergence is that the first strand of literature emphasizes technological
opportunities, such as yield increases, to reduce land use impact, and reap economic opportunities,
while the other strand of literature investigates environmental dimensions under risk of being
harmed (Creutzig, 2014). The growing literature exploring sustainable landscape management
systems for the provision of biomass and other ecosystem services might gradually come to bridge

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 the gap between these two strands of literature. Not the least, the integration of bioenergy systems
into agriculture landscapes has been recognized as a promising option for addressing environmental
impacts associated with current agriculture systems (Clarke et al., 2014; Edenhofer et al., 2014;
Accepted Article
Smith et al., 2014).
The IPCC report annex on bioenergy also points out that environmental, social, and economic
consequences of bioenergy deployment are site specific, but remains inconclusive on weighting the
consequences across case studies. This review goes beyond the IPCC assessment in providing a
comprehensive meta-analysis, demonstrating that case studies evaluated so far tend to see
increased economic and employment opportunities, GHG savings from fossil fuel displacement, and
infrastructure development, but also risks related to land use change, in particular GHG emissions,
food security, soil and water quality, biodiversity, and socially problematic outcomes.
Since the publication of the latest IPCC assessment report, further research on bioenergy has been
published, which is in line with the main conclusions of our systematic review. The screening of this
literature suggests that case studies mostly emphasize GHG emissions metrics and economic
performance (e.g. (García et al., 2015; Mandaloufas et al., 2015)) and Dale et al. (2015) point out the
importance of appropriate sustainability criteria and indicators. This observation suggests that the
systematic bias observed in our survey of case studies can be interpreted as showing that social
dimensions have been assigned a lower priority by scientists and policy processes than some
environmental and economic dimensions.

There are limitations to the systematic review presented in this article. First, the complexity of the
subject of analysis, such as the high number of potential interactions within the system boundaries
and the lack of inclusion of criteria for analysing trans-boundary impacts or trade-offs between
specific criteria and scale of the impacts, renders results of models and case studies partially
inconclusive and subject to a priori values of investigators (Tribe et al., 1976). Second, most results in
both cases depend on attributional accounting, which has been argued to be possibly misleading,
while consequential accounting, being subject to higher uncertainties, might provide more policy-
relevant information. This is especially relevant for studies using LCA methods (Brandao et al., 2013;
Hertwich, 2014; Plevin et al., 2014; Plevin et al., 2014). Third, we focused on studies published in
English only. These limitations should be considered in future studies, and analysed using
complementary assessment methods.
Overall, we find that comparatively assessing the impacts of bioenergy production on sustainable
development using the available scientific literature is a considerable challenge, but we are able to
propose four recommendations for future research: a) pursue a more stringent use of frameworks
and methodologies that attribute impacts of bioenergy production on all development categories; b)
report context conditions and criteria for attributing development impacts transparently; c) improve
understanding of impacts of bioenergy production in developing countries with potentially
favourable biophysical conditions for bioenergy; and d) improve understanding of potential
sustainable development impacts in different regions of using other bioenergy feedstock than
biomass from dedicated plantations (e.g., organic waste and /or agricultural/forestry residues).
Addressing these issues is essential for providing a more solid scientific basis for policy making and
governance agreements in the field of bioenergy and sustainable development.

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 Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the participation Omar Masera, Richard Plevin, Roberto
Schaeffer, Rainer Zah and Jacob Mulugetta during the literature appraisal. Carmenza Robledo-Abad
Accepted Article
acknowledges support from the Swiss State Secretary of Economic Affairs. Helmut Haberl gratefully
acknowledges funding from the Austrian proVISION programme, the Austrian Academy of Sciences
(Global Change Programme), and the EU-FP7 project VOLANTE.

Esteve Corbera acknowledges the support of the Spanish Research, Development and Innovation
Secretariat through a ‘Ramón y Cajal’ research fellowship (RYC-2010-07183) and of a Marie Curie
Career Integration Grant (PCIG09-GA-2011-294234). Simon Bolwig acknowledges the support of the
Innovation Fond Denmark. Alexander Popp acknowledges the support from the European Union's
Seventh Framework Program project LUC4C (grant agreement no. 603542). Bart Muys acknowledges
support from the KLIMOS Acropolis research network on sustainable development funded by
VLIR/ARES/DGD (Belgian Development Aid). Rasmus Kløcker Larsen acknowledges funding from the
Swedish research council Formas. Carol Hunsberger acknowledges the support of a postdoctoral
fellowship from Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. John Garcia-Ulloa is
supported by the Mercator Foundation Switzerland and the Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center. Johan
Lilliestam, Anna Geddes and Susan Hanger acknowledge the support from the European Research
Council (ERC) consolidator grant, contract number 313533. Joana Portugal-Pereira
acknowledges the support of National Centre of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq),
under the Science Without Borders Programme (nº 401164/2012-8). Richard Harper acknowledges
funding from the Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency.

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 # of % of Rank #
Country Rank NPP
studies global NPP studies
Accepted Article
A. Countries with more than 1 study and more than 1% of global NPP
United States 80 6.50% 1 3
Brazil 25 12.10% 2 1
China 13 5.60% 4 5
India 13 2.30% 5 10
Canada 9 6.00% 10 4
Indonesia 9 3.20% 12 8
United Republic of Tanzania 8 1.10% 14 19
Australia 7 4.90% 15 6
B. Countries with less than 5 studies and more than 1% of global NPP
Russian Federation 3 11.30% 27 2
Argentina 3 2.40% 23 9
Dem. Rep. of the Congo 0 3.70% 98 7
Colombia 0 1.90% 89 11
Peru 1 1.60% 51 12
Angola 0 1.50% 65 13
Mexico 1 1.50% 48 14
Venezuela 0 1.50% 209 15
Bolivia 0 1.40% 78 16
Sudan 0 1.30% 192 17
Kazakhstan 0 1.20% 131 18
C. Countries with 5 or more Studies and less than 1% of global NPP
Italy 14 0.24% 3 63
Sweden 13 0.36% 6 50
United Kingdom 12 0.23% 7 65
Malaysia 10 0.56% 8 32
South Africa 10 0.63% 9 28
Germany 9 0.37% 11 46
Thailand 9 0.51% 13 35
Mozambique 6 0.91% 16 22
Austria 5 0.08% 17 97
Belgium 5 0.04% 18 125
Spain 5 0.37% 19 48
Denmark 4 0.05% 20 119
France 4 0.58% 21 31
Netherlands 4 0.04% 22 123

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Accepted Article

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 Combination Condition / Impact

yes / +

yes / n
yes / -
p-value

no / +

no / n
no / -
Impact Condition
Accepted Article
(Fisher-test)
Food security or food production
Existing deficit in food access and/or
(negative if reduced or positive if
supply
improved) 0.00154111 2 20 3 3 1 4
Existing deficit in food access and/or
Conflicts or social tension
supply 0.02222222 7 1 2 0 0 1
Direct substitution of GHG emissions Sharing mechanisms of economic benefits
reductions from fossil fuels in place 0.03571429 0 2 0 6 0 0
Prices of feedstock Modern (industrial) technologies 0.04449388 11 4 13 1 2 0
Employment ( being employment
Mechanisms for sectorial coordination
creation (+) or employment reduction (-
are in place
)) 0.04545455 7 0 0 2 1 2

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Accepted Article

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Accepted Article

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Accepted Article

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.