Does Belgian bioethanol comply with European Renewable Energy Directive ?

The craze for biofuels has increased in recent years mainly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumptions. The European Renewable Energy Directive (RED), published in 2009, defined guidelines to assess carbon footprint of a biofuel depending on biomass source. It also provided generic values of GHG emissions relative to each step of the life cycle taking into account all steps from the cultivation to the end-of-life. These values are used to evaluate the sustainability of European biofuels depending on the used crops and the used transformation technology.
This study, based on local crops cultivated in Belgium (sugar beet and wheat), compares specific Belgian values with European generic ones. Belgium yields for both crops are among the best of the continent. Specific Belgian values for fertilizers and pesticides are used. The transformation of wheat into bioethanol is modelled using industrial data. As recommended by the RED, no land use change is taken into account for Belgium.
Greenhouse gas emissions induce by the life cycle of Belgium sugar beet bioethanol are similar to the ones mentioned in the European directive but impact repartition is different. In our case, the transformation step achieves a higher part of the impact. That can be explained by the higher cultivation yield. Belgian wheat bioethanol obtains better results than those mentioned by the European directive with a 9% higher reduction. Cultivation step is the major step for this impact. Importance of fertilizers consumptions and associated emissions are highlighted.
The comparison of both bioethanols impacts for climate change category, using an energy basis, shows that wheat allows a higher reduction of GHG emissions than sugar beet. If the comparison is performed on a cultivated area basis, results are reversed and sugar beet achieves a twofold reduction compared with wheat.
Sensitivity analyses are performed on the importance of N fertilizers and associated emissions and on energy consumptions relative to the transformation step. These analyses reveal non-negligible impact variations. A range of GHG reduction that can be reached using Belgian sugar beet and wheat bioethanol are then calculated. In any case, sugar beet does not achieve the amount of reduction given by the RED, while the opposite effect is shown for wheat with a reduction at least as high as the RED default value.
These results indicate the importance of make use of specific values to assess the sustainability of bioethanol for a specific country using a specific crop and a specific technology. Further measurements and research about emission factors due to fertilizers application could improve the accuracy of our results.