BEFS Rapid Appraisal

The Bioenergy and Food Security (BEFS) Approach of FAO helps countries design and implement sustainable bioenergy policies and strategies, by ensuring that bioenergy development fosters both food and energy security, and that it contributes to agricultural and rural development in a climate-smart way.

The BEFS Approach consists of a multidisciplinary and integrated set of tools and guidance, including the forthcoming BEFS Rapid Appraisal (RA), which is currently being developed by the FAO BEFS team.

The BEFS RA will allow countries to get an initial indication of their sustainable bioenergy potential and of the associated opportunities, risks and trade-offs. To this aim, the BEFS RA will provide a set of easily applicable methodologies and user-friendly tools to address the following key questions: 

1.      Sustainable feedstock potential

• How much residue from current agricultural and forestry production is available to produce bioenergy, taking into account existing uses?
• Which crops that could be used for bioenergy production can be grown in the country under the prevailing agro-ecological conditions? What is the current domestic production of these crops? How much could be produced through an intensification of agricultural production?
• Can there be a sustainable expansion of the agricultural area, taking into consideration competing demands for land, especially for food production and biodiversity conservation? How much additional bioenergy feedstock could be produced through such expansion? 

2.      Techno-economic viability

• Which bioenergy processing technologies are viable in the country?
• Can bioenergy be produced in an economically viable way? At which scale? To what extent can smallholders be included in bioenergy supply chains?
• How does the cost of bioenergy compare to that of alternative energy sources in the country? Can domestically produced bioenergy be cost competitive on the international market?
• Which feedstocks, management practices and processing technologies can deliver the largest greenhouse gas emission savings? Are these in line with the requirements of importing markets? 

3.      Socio-economic sustainability

• What is the employment generation potential of bioenergy development?
• How could bioenergy development affect the profitability of different crops at farm level? What could be the resulting changes in farmers’ production choices?
• To what degree could bioenergy development contribute to energy access?
• How could access to land by local communities be affected by bioenergy development? 

The BEFS RA will also help countries identify the issues that could potentially require further analysis through the more complex methodologies and tools that comprise the BEFS Analytical Framework.

The intended primary users of the BEFS RA are technical government officials from a broad range of disciplines, including Agronomy, Engineering and Economics. Other potential users include international organizations, universities, NGOs and private sector operators.

The RA is being designed so as to be implementable within a six-month period, including in contexts with limited data, skills and resources.

An interim draft of the BEFS Rapid Appraisal will be ready by mid 2013. Following field-testing in two countries, the RA will then be finalized by mid 2014.