Environmental assessments and Swedish consumption of biofuels : Review of Swedish biofuel research and aggregated life cycle assessment of Swedish biofuel consumption 2000-2013

Abstract: This thesis assesses the potential environmental impacts for Swedish biofuel consumption and evaluates the environmental scope in Swedish biofuel research. The biofuel consumption is portrayed with life cycle assessment methodology and presents the emissions occurring from different feedstock and fuel production regions. The outcome of the biofuel consumption is compared with a fossil fuel scenario in order to put the emissions of biofuels in broader context. A systematic literature review is conducted on the published Swedish environmental system analysis on biofuels, to quantitatively interpret assessed environmental indicators and methods. The findings are that while global warming potential emissions decreased, local environmental impact potentials increases drastically. Most of the environmental burdens from the consumption have occurred in the EU and South America. Results from the systematic literature review shows on a dominating scope towards global warming potential and energy performance of the fuels. The justifications for the low consideration of other impact categories are often without motivation. Implications occurring from the limited scope are discussed in terms of potential problem shifting and its correspondence to Swedish environmental policy. The biofuel policies from the European Union and the Swedish Government are insufficient regarding mitigation of e.g. eutrophication, acidification and toxicity. Impacts from land use change and indirect land use change are also highly important to include in the assessments.