"scharlemann" - 1 õppematerjal

Sustainability aspects of biofuels

aspects as well. Ethanol produced from sugarcane has a competitive advantage over maize and corn feedstock, because the sugars can be directly diverted into ethanol. Also, unlike wheat, sugarcane industrial processing is often powered by sugarcane's by-product, bagasse. The main problem that overshadows the assessment of biofuels GHG emissions is the various advantages and disadvantages of all the different biofuels. As pointed out by Scharlemann and Laurnce (2008), there is no "common currency" for comparing biofuels, as each biofuel has certain benefits and costs. The article explains a study (Zah et al.,2007), where, on assessing biofuels against GHG and all other environmental costs, it was found that most biofuels reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but have other severe environmental costs. It Margit Tepner k0848752 suggests that there is a need to consider more than just energy and GHG emissions when evaluating different biofuels.