WORLD ENERGY TRANSITIONS OUTLOOK
6.5 BIOMASS SUSTAINABILITY
The use of bioenergy can bring greenhouse gas reductions along with other contributions to the sustainability objectives (IRENA, IEA Bioenergy, and FAO, 2015). The production and use of bioenergy must be managed with care, however. Sustainability concerns about production and consumption are major issues in the bioenergy industry. They pose risks to investors and also discourage policy makers from making bioenergy a major pillar of their strategies for reaching 1.5°C targets. They also have a strong relationship with the estimates of potential discussed in Section 6.4.
Benefits and potential impacts Sustainable biomass practices could bring benefits, including afforestation, lowered GHG emissions, degraded land restoration, improved waste management, as well as reduced pollution. Economic benefits, especially to rural communities, can also be significant. If they are not designed and operated with care, bioenergy supply chains might harm the environment and socio-economic aspects, with impacts depending on the bioenergy technology, feedstock and end uses. Other impacts may extend to conflict over land, emissions related to land-use change, deforestation, biodiversity loss and air pollution (IRENA, 2022g).
Afforestation and avoiding carbon stock loss The development of bioenergy may encourage afforestation (timber plantations) and boost carbon stock. Viet Nam is implementing rapid afforestation because of increased demand (Arvola et al. 2020; Van Hung and Thuy 2020). Intensive management of productive forests may improve stock replenishment and the rate of carbon removal. The scale-up of bioenergy use has meanwhile triggered debate over the risk of converting forest and high carbon stock areas to monocultural agriculture or timber plantations for bioenergy production. The plantations generally have much lower carbon stock than natural forests. Carbon stock loss resulting from land conversion may exceed the emission savings achieved from fossil fuel substitution, defeating the purpose of bioenergy development. The risk is considered high in regions relying on land exploitation to induce economic development.
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