Bioenergy plays an important role in the global energy transition, offering renewable alternatives such as biofuels, biogas, and biomass. While it can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, bioenergy also raises concerns related to land use, deforestation, water demand, biodiversity, and community impacts.
SEA helps address these challenges by identifying key environmental and socio-economic risks, assessing cumulative impacts, and guiding more responsible policies, plans, and programs. It also supports early engagement with communities and vulnerable groups, ensuring that bioenergy development balances environmental protection with social and economic benefits.
8.1 Why SEA is Important for Bioenergy
8.2 Existing SEA Guidance/Guidelines for the Bioenergy Sub-Sector
8.3 Bioenergy Installed Capacity
8.4 Background to Bioenergy Generation
8.5 Impacts of Bioenergy Development
Bioenergy uses organic materials—such as plants, agricultural residues, forestry by-products, and waste—to produce energy. It includes both traditional uses (like burning wood or animal waste) and modern bioenergy (such as biofuels, biogas, and biomass pellets used in power plants). Bioenergy can support the shift toward cleaner energy, but it also poses significant land, water, and ecosystem challenges that must be managed carefully.
Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) helps governments and planners identify environmental and socio-economic risks early in the development of policies, plans, and programs (PPPs) for bioenergy. Key risks include land-use change, deforestation, water demand, pollution, and loss of habitats and biodiversity, especially when large areas are converted to monoculture energy crops. These changes can reduce land available for food production, raise food prices, and put pressure on rural communities.
Bioenergy development can create jobs and stimulate rural economies, but it may also lead to land conflicts, displacement, and concerns over labor conditions, including forced or child labor in some supply chains. Women, Indigenous peoples, and other vulnerable groups often face disproportionate impacts, such as loss of land access, increased workloads, or reduced livelihood security. Health risks—from air pollution, chemical exposure, and increased traffic—are also important considerations.
Although bioenergy can reduce greenhouse gas emissions when it replaces fossil fuels, the climate benefits depend on how feedstocks are grown, harvested, and processed. For example, burning wood pellets may release significant carbon if forests are not regrown quickly enough to reabsorb emissions.
SEA helps ensure bioenergy is developed responsibly, by assessing cumulative impacts across regions, identifying “no-go” areas, improving PPPs, and engaging communities early. This helps guide development in ways that protect the environment, support local livelihoods, and maximize the benefits of renewable energy.