Improving Decision-Making for the Energy Transition: Guidance for Using Strategic Environmental Assessment
Chapter 8 focuses on the crucial role played by bioenergy in the global energy transition, as it offers significant potential for sustainable energy generation. SEA is an important tool to guide bioenergy development, helping to identify environmental and socio-economic risks and supporting better decision-making.
Bioenergy includes both traditional methods (like burning wood and animal waste) and modern technologies (such as biofuels, biogas, and biomass). While bioenergy contributes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and offers renewable energy, it also presents challenges like land use change, deforestation, water usage, and soil erosion. These impacts can lead to habitat loss, biodiversity degradation, and socio-economic issues like displacement and food security risks.
SEA helps manage these issues by focusing on key concerns, such as cumulative impacts of multiple projects and the need to engage local communities and vulnerable groups. This chapter also highlights the importance of optimizing policies, plans, and programs (PPPs) for renewable energy, especially those concerned with bioenergy (and the projects which flow from them), ensuring that they balance environmental protection with socio-economic benefits, such as job creation and infrastructure development.
What is bioenergy?
Bioenergy uses organic materials like plants, agricultural waste, and other natural resources to produce energy. There are two types: traditional bioenergy (such as burning wood or animal waste) and modern bioenergy (like producing biogas and biofuels from crops or industrial waste). Bioenergy plays an important role in the shift toward cleaner energy, but it comes with some challenges that need to be managed carefully.
How can SEA be helpful in bioenergy projects?
Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) helps the development and implementation of policies, plans, and programs (PPPs) concerned with renewable energy development, particularly those concerned with bioenergy, by identifying environmental and socio-economic risks early on. These risks include changes in land use, increased water usage, deforestation, and loss of habitats and biodiversity. Large bioenergy developments can take up a lot of land, which may lead to cutting down forests and reducing the space available for farming. This can also raise food prices and affect food security, especially for poor communities.
On the positive side, bioenergy projects can create jobs and boost rural economies. However, it can also lead to problems like forcing people off their land, causing disputes over land ownership, and concerns over food security. Women and other vulnerable groups can be particularly affected, as they often bear the brunt of these changes. Health risks are another concern, with issues like air pollution from burning biofuels and exposure to chemicals used in farming.
While bioenergy can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by replacing fossil fuels, it is important that developments are planned and implemented sustainably. For example, burning wood for energy could release a lot of carbon, especially if the trees used aren’t replaced quickly enough.
SEA helps make sure that bioenergy development is planned in a way that protects the environment and supports local communities. By carefully considering the potential impacts, planners can ensure that bioenergy development benefits everyone while minimizing harm to the planet and people.