La durabilité du biodiesel brésilien dans la perspective de la Directive Européenne EnR: comment l’évaluer ?

To meet its objectives of expanding biofuel production, Brazil is confronted with the need to allocate new land areas for energy crops. This raises issues to be resolved concerning future exports to Europe. The European Directive 2009/28/CE of 23 April 2009 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources (REN) specifies that biofuel production must respect some sustainability criteria. We present in this paper an approach based on the complementarity of two different tools to evaluate the Brazilian biofuel’s sustainability from the REN Directive’s perspective. On the one hand, the life cycle assessment (LCA) which is the required method for estimating greenhouse gas emissions in biofuels production. Our bibliographic study shows that the correct employment of the LCA implies the consideration of some parameters related to land use and land use change such as carbon storage and nitrogen oxides N2O emissions. On the other hand, we can identify the environmental impact assessment (EIA) method called Apoia-NovoRural as a potential tool to respond to the criteria concerning the protection of natural ecosystems and biodiversity, included in the REN Directive.