Environmental analysis methodologies of biofuels supply chains: life cycle analyses and new spatial approaches

This work aims to provide informations and tools that are currently lacking in the environmental analysis of biofuels, especially in the life cycle analysis (LCA). This work includes two complementary parts. The first part focuses on biofuels supply chains at international scale. A descriptive study allows us to define the PEC system (Production, Elaboration, Consumption) to represent these supply chains. A tool is developed to describe and quantify PEC entities from biofuel consumption to areas of primary crops production. This tool is applied to biodiesel consumption in the EU using bioproducts flows data taken from international trade databases. It shows that biodiesel consumption involves a rapidly growing contribution of crop areas outside the EU (Non-EU), increasing from 28% in 2004 to 76% in 2009. Non-EU crop areas are indeed simultaneously mobilised through imports of bioproducts (22-46%) and through direct imports of biodiesel (0-40%). This tool eventually produces allocation matrices, based on national consumption, which are useful for LCA. The second part focuses on primary crops areas by considering a local level in order to integrate their spatial heterogeneities and territorial specificities. Primary crop areas in major producing countries supplying EU's biofuel consumptions are localised. Examination of the production situation in important countries allows to identify the nature of in situ local impacts and to study criticality of impacts in the national and territorial context. Then, spatial approaches based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are applied to bioethanol industries in Brazil. In this approach, about 620 ethanol plants in Brazil are localised using GIS and their supply areas are characterised. This leads to the measurement of specific indicators, such as spatiotemporal patterns of sugarcane expansion. These results are a contribution to the understanding of the structure and interactions among supply chains and to a better consideration of the spatial aspects in environmental analysis and LCA studies of biofuels consumed in Europe. (author)