“Biofuels and sustainability: analysis of socio-economic and environmental impacts in the European and Brazilian context - Analisi della sostenibilità socio-economica ed ambientale dei biocarburanti nel contesto europeo e brasiliano”

The last decade has seen a rapid increase in the production and consumption of biofuels at global level. This development has been especially stimulated by policy as a means to promote energy security and to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. Nowadays, world biofuel markets are dominated by ethanol (79%) and biodiesel (21%). In particular, Biodiesel market is dominated by the European Union, at the same time Brazil is the world’s biggest sugar producer and exporter, as well as the world’s largest producer and consumer of sugarcane ethanol as a transportation fuel. However, several authors have recently raised concerns about the environmental benefits and social-economic implications of biofuels production such as underlying uncertainties over the life cycle emissions of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), possible deforestation for feedstock production, degradation of soil (ILUC) and air quality, increased water consumption, possible loss of biodiversity, possible competition with food production, and other potential social imbalances. The aim of this work is to investigate the impacts of biofuels on the environmental aspects and food prices in the European and Brazilian context. In order to assess the environmental performance this work aims to identify environmental criteria in order to evaluate the impact of the entire biodiesel production chain thought an exploratory meta-analysis of international scientific research. The information from the meta-analysis enabled the design and implementation of a multi-criteria methodology to define the best alternative between different agricultural raw materials used for biodiesel production (rapeseed oil, sunflower oil and palm oil) according to the principles of sustainability expressed by current EU policy. In order to explore relationship between food commodity and biofuel prices a time series models is used. In particular, both the impact of EU biodiesel prices on diesel and rapeseed oil prices and Brazilian ethanol prices on sugar and gasoline prices are investigated using a vector error corrections model (VECM). The multi-criteria shows that from an environmental perspective the best solution at European level is biodiesel production based on sunflower oil. This solution would be very interesting for Europe and especially for Italy. However, the sunflower chain is not feasible from the economic point of view, especially for the biodiesel company. In fact, if the economic aspect is priority, the palm oil from Malaysia is the best alternative. Finally, the results from the time series analysis suggest that biofuels prices are mainly affected by feedstock prices, but there is no strong evidence that changes in biofuels prices affect food prices, for the market and time period considered.