On 18-20 September 2007, IRGC convened an Expert Meeting on bioenergy in the form of a workshop. The workshop, which was chaired by Jeff McNeely, Chief Scientist of IUCN – The World Conservation Union, sought to identify governance gaps and begin drafting governance guidelines for bioenergy.
The workshop was split into four sessions :
1. Agreeing on the key issues and challenges In its early discussions, the workshop began to identify key issues, concerns and questions related to bioenergy production, trade and use. The group stressed the complexity of many of the issues, which are not only technical, but also very political. Bioenergy sits at the intersection between many different policies, interests and topics and combines environment, agriculture and technology, ecosystem services and energy needs.
2. Identifying key policy elements as framed by dominant perspectives on the development of bioenergy The second session asked participants to highlight key policy elements on bioenergy from three “dominant perspectives”. The participants were split into three groups to work on framing exercises which prioritized energy policy, the environment, and poverty alleviation and rural development, respectively. These three groups then reported back to plenary and participants discussed the ways that the different perspectives affected how trade-offs, risks and opportunities were prioritised and how this would greatly affect the decision making process.
3. Highlighting different stakeholder viewpoints and identify risk governance gaps The third session identified governance gaps and analysed how three different stakeholder groups perceive bioenergy and explored their priorities, concerns, knowledge gaps and their views and expectations of other stakeholders. The three stakeholder groups were :
A. Industry and the private sector B. Regulators C. NGOs and civil society
4. Drafting the main issues that governance guidelines for bioenergy should focus on. During the final session participants discussed key points about the essential style and content of the forthcoming IRGC governance guidelines on bioenergy.
Some key issues
General discussion on bioenergy can be counterproductive since each form of bioenergy is highly context specific.
More analysis is needed to establish accurate data about the relative sustainability of different bioenergy pathways. Life cycle assessments (LCAs) should be transparent and neutral so that different technologies can be fairly compared. Comparative analysis should be carried out not only between different bioenergy options, but with all other available options, including fossil fuels. Since local context often greatly influences the results of LCAs, assessments should be done on a case by case basis to reflect locally specific conditions. Lastly, the workshop participants also stressed that analysis needs to be done before policies are set since assessments act as a crucial tool for decision makers to set policies that are most appropriate for their goals and priorities.
Bioenergy cannot solve energy problems single-handedly. Governance guidelines should highlight that bioenergy can only reasonably supply a small percentage of the overall energy mix without severe environmental impacts. Governance guidelines should be set within a broad context of encouraging energy efficiency and sustainable development.
Timing is critical, both in terms of policy intentions, and stability of intentions, and when new technology developments come on-line.
Scale remains a major factor. Most benefits for rural development will come from smaller scale initiatives, providing income to farmers as well as electricity and biofuels (biogas) for local needs. However bioenergy is also increasingly a global business. The overall impact of such a scale-up will be to take the industry and benefits further from the farmers and small land-owners. Many second generation biomass conversion technologies need heavy capital investments and thus need to be operated at large scales. Decision makers need overall guidance on the effects of changes in scale as a key variable.
The current bioenergy industry is closely tied to land use at a global scale. Since there are global markets for food and fuel, land used for any purpose (such as food, fuel, protected areas, urban development) is in competition with all other land. Decision makers need much better tools to make the necessary land use trade offs.
Many of the expected benefits of bioenergy are strongly dependent on ongoing innovation in agriculture, biochemistry, industrial processing and other areas of technology such as vehicle engine development. In many areas changes are rapid but in other areas there is a risk that current policies and practices will result in lock-in to existing methods of bioenergy deployment due to inflexible policy, investments and technologies. To avoid lock-ins, guidelines should outline how policy can both stimulate and account for the effects of change.
As bioenergy expands, trade in bioenergy will also increase. Some countries may wish to focus on domestic production and consumption, others on export or import to fulfill their respective economic, social and energy needs. In most cases decision makers will need guidance on applicable trade rules and regulations.
Industry and capital investors need certainty, clear guidelines regarding policies, regulations and market mechanisms on CO2 emissions, pollution and environmental impacts.
As some form of carbon tax or international cap & trade scheme becomes increasingly likely, governance guidelines should outline how such schemes would affect the bioenergy sector and help decision makers understand which choices will be most suitable when bioenergy will be effectively re-priced based on GHG emissions. Carbon taxes are technology neutral and thus efficient at providing the most cost effective way of reducing emissions. However, they do not capture other environmental factors such as pollution, soil quality (cannot compensate degradation), and biodiversity (cannot compensate losses). So any carbon tax or cap-and-trade system needs to work alongside a set of sustainability standards.
Participants agreed that policies should be clearly goal-oriented (i.e. focus on priorities and direct benefits such as reduced oil imports, poverty reduction, GHG emissions savings) rather than focusing on proxies such as percentage blends in the fuel mix, which do not explicitly capture the potential benefits of bioenergy.
For additional information, please click on First Workshop Summary Statement.