Developing a Roadmap for Tracking Sustainability in Bioenergy Transitions

Abstract

Sustainability of any transition is contingent on both the processes and outcomes. To measure if a particular program or project is sustainable, a heterogenous set of methods and indicators are required to evaluate processes and outcomes at the same time. In this paper, we characterize the parameters of programmatic evaluation and propose a sustainability tracking roadmap for bioenergy conversions. Drawing from the state of scholarship on triple bottom line (TBL) sustainability, multi-dimensional systems view of sustainability transitions and bioenergy, the breadth of sustainability questions are framed. Comparing to a selection of commonly used measurement and evaluation approaches, including several of those funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), a profile of coverage for sustainability issues is generated. We find that nearly all of the current approaches focus mostly on planetary or regional-scale questions and on project-efficiency metrics. A significant gap exists in capturing intermediate-scale phenomenon and social dynamics of interventions. This creates blind spots in capturing justice, equity, and economic futures at local scales. The proposed sustainability tracking roadmap offer a mixed-methods heuristic to design and implement a suite of indicators and data processes for TBL accounting. Operational questions of integrating evaluation with planning, data use and production, and stakeholder roles and capacities are discussed.