Sustainability Concern|Unsustainable Bioenergy Use
Why this criterion? This criterion flags scenarios that assume a high usage of bioenergy. Specifically, we here refer to 2nd generation bioenergy crops, crop and forestry residues, municipal solid waste bioenergy and traditional biomass.
Bioenergy can be a drop-in replacement to currently used fossil fuels. When grown in a sustainable fashion, their life-cycle of production and use is GHG neutral. Bio-based energy crops can be grown at low cost and with readily available technologies.
Some decarbonisation scenarios therefore tend to assume a high use of bioenergy. Meanwhile, such a high use of bioenergy can result in (a) growth practices that are no longer GHG neutral in their life cycle (e.g. through deforestation to create more arable land for energy crops) or result in (b) a loss of natural habitats, which creates other sustainability concerns, for instance linked to a loss of biodiversity.
Why this threshold? Creutzig (2014) have derived an upper limit for sustainable biomass use of 100–300 EJ/yr. In the 6th Assessment Report of Working Group 3 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a value of 100 EJ/yr is defined as the threshold for the onset of medium concern and 245 EJ/yr a threshold for the onset of high concern (IPCC, 2022). Another study by Deprez (2024) suggests that medium sustainability risks arise at 50 EJ/yr and high risks at 120 EJ/yr.
Based on these studies, we assume the following global thresholds across all years:
• Upper threshold, medium concern: 100 EJ/yr
• Upper threshold, high concern: 245 EJ/yr
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Sources
| Identifier | Bibliographic information | Links |
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Felix Creutzig, N. H. Ravindranath, Göran Berndes, Simon Bolwig, Ryan Bright, Francesco Cherubini, Helena Chum, Esteve Corbera, Mark Delucchi, Andre Faaij, Joseph Fargione, Helmut Haberl, Garvin Heath, Oswaldo Lucon, Richard Plevin, Alexander Popp, Carmenza Robledo-Abad, Steven Rose, Pete Smith, Anders Stromman, Sangwon Suh, and Omar Masera. Bioenergy and climate change mitigation: an assessment. GCB Bioenergy, 7(5):916–944, July 2014. | DOI |
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IPCC. Annex III: Scenarios and Modelling Methods. In Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, 2022. | DOI |
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Alexandra Deprez, Paul Leadley, Kate Dooley, Phil Williamson, Wolfgang Cramer, Jean-Pierre Gattuso, Aleksandar Rankovic, Eliot L. Carlson, and Felix Creutzig. Sustainability limits needed for CO\(_2\) removal. Science, 383(6682):484–486, February 2024. | DOI |