Widespread production of bioenergy: land and water availability factors

ABSTRACT

Widespread production of bioenergy appears to be a potential candidate to counteract fossil fuel depletion and environmental degradation challenges. However, the competing role of bioenergy with food and feed in the use of land and water resources intrinsically causes numerous social and environmental challenges, which translate into sustainability factors for bioenergy. This paper evaluates the status and prospects of land and water resources in terms of sustainability factors concerning widespread production of bioenergy. Four major factors that broadly connect with sustainability of bioenergy are evaluated in this work: land availability, soil erosion, nutrients and biodiversity losses, and water availability. This work has found that although widespread production of bioenergy is subject to several limitations and constraints associated with land and water resources, these two resources are still sufficient at the global level. Globally, available land for biomass production is expected to remain within the range of 1.17 to 2.18 Gha by 2050, which will not compete with food and feed production. Recognising the limits of using land and water resources against regional disparity and competing applications, as well as employing rational practices, could enable the attainment of extensive production of bioenergy.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainability
• bioenergy
• water depletion
• soil erosion
• biodiversity

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Aalto University School of Engineering, Finland, for proving financial support for conducting this research. The corresponding author is also grateful to Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and Ministry of Education, Malaysia (MOE) for providing financial support through RUG (PAS) grant (01K95) for processing this research work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The tolerable soil erosion rate is the annual maximum amount of soil which can be removed before the long-term natural soil productivity is adversely affected.

2. Support practices reflect the effects of practices that will reduce the amount of the water runoff to reduce the soil erosion.

3. Blue-water footprint refer to consumption of the blue-water resources, i.e. fresh surface water and ground water. It consists of four cycles; water that evaporates, water incorporated into the product, water that does not return to the same catchment area where it came from, and water that does not return in the same period.

4. The water stress limit is the limit for maximum 25% withdrawal of the available water resource.