Two birds with one stone : A combined environmental and economic performance assessment of rapeseed-based biodiesel production

Rapeseed is the dominant feedstock for biodiesel production in Germany; however, significant decline in crop yields observed during the 2018 drought in Europe poses economic and environmental risks for its sustained use as a fuel crop. Many Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies were conducted to quantify the potential environmental impacts of biodiesel production; however, only a few studies have considered the spatial and temporal heterogeneities of the studied regions. Furthermore, previous studies have usually only focused on the greenhouse gas (GHG) savings of biodiesel and have ignored the environmental burden and economic profits of biodiesel production. For the first time, we combined the Regional Environmental LCA model with an economic analysis to evaluate both the environmental impact and the economic benefits of biodiesel production in Central Germany (CG). Our results showed that emissions from rapeseed cultivation were the largest contributor to both global and regional environmental impact categories. In our study region, we found that GHG emissions were around 56%–71% lower for rapeseed-based biodiesel than for fossil fuels. Due to the drought in 2018, we also observed that the regional rapeseed supply could not meet the demand of biodiesel production in CG. An economic analysis of biodiesel production found significant economies of scale effect in the biodiesel industry. In addition, none of the studied biodiesel plants were able to operate at their designed installed capacities without causing indirect land-use change. Furthermore, the profitability of biodiesel production was closely related to the feedstock cultivation cost. Based on these findings, we concluded that a regionalized LCA model would be able to more accurately evaluate the environmental influence of biodiesel production by taking site-specific conditions into consideration. We also suggest that potential biodiesel plant operators take the regional biodiesel production density and feedstock cultivation conditions into account when deciding on plant size.