Sustainability
Whether biofuels can actually make a contribution to climate protection depends on several influencing factors.
GHG reduction varies among biofuels, the applied feedstock and the region where the feedstock is cultivated. Raw materials from tropical regions generally allow higher GHG savings than the local ones. Moreover, biofules compete with other alternative sources of energy such as wind energy, biogas, hydraulic power etc. GHG reduction costs also vary among them. This emphazises that competitiveness of biofuels compared with other renewable sources of energy is linked to certain conditions. Ethanol from Brazil offers in parts even negative GHG reduction costs, since ethanol is cheaper than conventional gasoline.
On the other hand, GHG reduction costs of local biofuels are clearly higher than those of wind energy, hydraulic power and biomass heat and power stations. However, GHG balance of tropical biofuels is not free of controversy. Since the necessary quantity to supply the global market demand cannot be produced on the existing plantation areas, increasingly additional areas are converted into agricultural land. Environmental groups accuse Indonesia to convert in particular Borneo jungle into palm oil plantation. Large quantities of GHG, which so far were bound to the rainforest, are released so that the biodiesel GHG balance turns out negative in comparison with fossil fuel. Brazil is also accused to relocate agricultural production by the expansion of sugarcane cultivation areas into the Amazon rainforest, a situation that makes drastically worse the GHG balance of Brazilian biofuels.