Measuring the Sustainability of Bioenergy Systems – Application of Qualitative and Quantitative Tools that Include Economic, Environmental and Social Impacts

Commercialization of bioenergy or bioproducts is based, in large part, on their ability to provide a sustainable alternative to current fossil based fuels or products. But there have been a very limited number of studies that have incorporated a systematic analysis of the complex economic, environmental and social trade-offs required for creating a truly sustainable product.

This work highlights the use of alternative approaches, with different requirements for data quality, that may be used at different points in the product development cycle. A qualitative multi-attribute decision support system (MADSS) approach and a quantitative linear programing (LP) approach were used to evaluate different bioenergy systems. Both projects included the evaluation of multiple economic, environmental and social attributes, and complete process from the feedstock production, the bioproduct manufacturing process and use of the bioenergy product. The MADSS work is built on the work of ORNL, but was extended to include the production and use of the bioenergy product. The LP work converted selected economic, environmental and social attributes to common units, dollars, and then used standard LP tools to evaluate a series of alternatives. The strengths, and limitations, of both approaches are discussed.