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BIOFUEL IMPACTS

Flying sustainably with forest leftovers

Nature Sustainability volume 1, pages 735–736 (2018)Cite this article

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Biofuels became controversial for compromising food production. Forest residue conversion to jet fuel is a second-generation biofuel that doesn’t compete with food. However, it has unexpected implications across the Sustainable Development Goals.

In this issue, Cavalett and Cherubini1 show that sourcing renewable jet fuel (RJF) from forest residues in Norway has long-term carbon-mitigation benefits. However, these benefits come at a cost. By taking a holistic lifecycle approach to assess sustainability implications, they also find that United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) regarding hunger, health, water, community air quality and material depletion may be negatively impacted. Still, experimentation with their models also indicated how negative repercussions can be mitigated by carefully managing the process supply chains.

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References

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  1. Masdar Institute, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE

    Sgouris Sgouridis

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  1. Sgouris Sgouridis
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Correspondence to Sgouris Sgouridis.

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Sgouridis, S. Flying sustainably with forest leftovers. Nat Sustain 1, 735–736 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0198-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0198-6

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