IEA: Carbon Accounting for Sustainable Biofuels | 2024

The IEA has published a report on carbon accounting for sustainable biofuels. The study was prepared in support of Brazil’s G20 presidency. It examines complexities that hinder the development of sound regulatory frameworks, which are needed to attract the necessary investments to scale up biofuel production.

Such regulatory frameworks will need to be backed by transparent, science-based carbon intensity calculations. A further complication in this respect is a lack of consensus across carbon accounting methodologies, which results in mixed reporting of biofuels’ GHG emissions.

The IEA study examines these complexities and discusses regulatory approaches for accounting GHG emissions for biofuels across various regions. It highlights the main reasons for variability of lifecycle GHG emissions of biofuels between different methodologies. The study found that most methodologies to calculate the GHG emissions of biofuels are very similar, except on the aspect of assessing the effects of land-use change. The effects of land use change can be considerable and these turn out to be a major source of disagreement between different policy frameworks.

The study concludes that policies need to adopt pragmatic approaches to support continuous improvements to biofuels. These approaches should be grounded in verification and performance.

The full report can be downloaded by clicking the image on the right.

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