social

The Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office held a workshop on "Social Aspects of Bioenergy" on April 24, 2012, in Washington, D.C., and convened a webinar on this topic on May 8, 2012. The workshop addressed questions about how to measure and understand the social impacts of bioenergy production based on a set of social sustainability indicators for bioenergy that were developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The workshop was attended by representatives from DOE, national labs, the Environmental Protection Agency, United States Department of Agriculture, and several universities.

Reducing “Energy Poverty” is increasingly acknowledged as the “Missing Development Goal”. This is because access to electricity and modern energy sources is a basic requirement to achieve and sustain decent and sustainable living standards. It is essential for lighting, heating and cooking, as well as for education, modern health treatment and productive activities, hence food security and rural development. Yet three billion people – about half of the world’s population - rely on unsustainable biomass-based energy sources to meet their basic energy needs for cooking and heating, and 1.6 billion people lack access to electricity.

Provides a summary of the key findings of the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources (SRREN) and Climate Change Mitigation.

The IPCC SRREN report addresses information needs of policymakers, the private sector and civil society on the potential of renewable energy sources for the mitigation of climate change, providing a comprehensive assessment of renewable energy technologies and related policy and financial instruments. The IPCC report was a multinational collaboration and synthesis of peer reviewed information: Reviewed, analyzed, coordinated, and integrated current high quality information. The OBP International Sustainability activities contributed to the Bioenergy chapter, technology cost annex as well as lifecycle assessments and sustainability information.