earticle

영어

Biofuel has received a lot of attention as a main viable technology that can reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and replace petroleumbased transport fuel. It has been commonly known to be sustainable and carbon-neutral because it can be produced from biomass, which is plentiful and absorbs CO2 to grow through photosynthesis. However, some biomass sources are evaluated to show limitations in aspects of sustainability. Especially, the high demand of food-derived biofuels may have been associated with the recent hikes in food prices, some adverse impacts on environment and issues of land use change. Under these conditions, Global Bioenergy Partnership makes efforts to promote environmentally-friendly biofuel production and use through the development of “Sustainability standards”, which contains some criteria such as GHG emissions, net energy balances, biodiversity, food security, and socioeconomic impacts. Korean government introduced Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) in 2012. It is required to develop more specified RFS that considers the sustainability issues of the biofuel and reflects the levels of life-cycle GHG reductions of each biomass.