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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Energy Res.
Sec. Bioenergy and Biofuels
Volume 12 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2024.1454862
This article is part of the Research Topic Life Cycle Analysis of Alternative Fuels for the Maritime Sector and Similar Industry View all 3 articles
Social Impact Assessment of Biofuel Production for Maritime and Aviation Sectors: A Case Study of a pilot biorefinery project
Provisionally accepted- National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece
This work presents a comprehensive Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) and Social Cost-Benefit Analysis (S-CBA) conducted as part of a research project, studying biofuel production for the maritime and aviation sectors, from various types of non-food waste biomasses. The inclusion of social considerations complements and expands on the environmental and economic ones.The importance of social group criteria was determined through expert questionnaires, leading to the identification of social impacts groups and social criteria from stakeholders across participating countries. The results successfully identified and quantified social impacts, and align with those reported in similar cases in relevant literature.Social Cost-Benefits, monetarizing social factors, demonstrated several social benefits, including reduction in Greenhouse Gas Emissions. However, it also highlighted social costs, such as Economic Costs associated with the initial investment.The study revealed critical social hotspots within the impact categories, making significant strides in understanding the social impacts of biofuel production, providing valuable insights for decisionmakers, and contributing to the broader goal of sustainable and socially responsible biofuel production.
Keywords: Social life cycle assessment, Social cost-benefit analysis, biofuel, Biorefinery, Maritime, Aviation, alternative fuel. (Min
Received: 25 Jun 2024; Accepted: 27 Aug 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Kostidi and Lyridis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Evanthia A. Kostidi, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece
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