Environmental and Socioeconomic Indicators for Bioenergy Sustainability as Applied to Eucalyptus

Table 3

List of recommended socioeconomic indicators for bioenergy sustainability (derived from Dale et al. (2013) [5]).

Category	Indicator	Units
Social well being	Employment	Number of full time equivalent (FTE) jobs^1
	Household income	Dollars per day
	Work days lost due to injury	Average number of work days lost per worker per year
	Food security	Percent change in food price volatility
Energy security	Energy security premium	Dollars/gallon biofuel
	Fuel supply volatility	Standard deviation of monthly percentage price changes over one year
External trade	Terms of trade	Ratio (price of exports/price of imports)
	Trade volume	Dollars (net exports or balance of payments)
Profitability	Return on investment; (ROI)^1	Percent (net investment/initial investment)
	Net present value (NPV)^2,3	Dollars (present value of benefits minus present value of costs)
Resource; conservation	Depletion of non-renewable energy resources	Amount of petroleum extracted per year (MT)
	Fossil Energy Return on Investment (fossil EROI)	Ratio of amount of fossil energy inputs to amount of useful energy output (MJ) (adjusted for energy quality)
Social acceptability	Public opinion	Percent favorable opinion
	Transparency	Percent of indicators for which timely and relevant performance data are reported^5
	Effective stakeholder participation	Percent of documented responses to stakeholder concerns and suggestions reported on an annual basis
	Risk of catastrophe^4	Annual probability of catastrophic event

¹FTE employment includes net new jobs created, plus jobs maintained that otherwise would have been lost, as a result of the system being assessed.
²Conventional economic models can address long-term sustainability issues by extending the planning horizon, projecting as an infinite geometric series, or calculating with a low discount rate.
³Can be expanded to include non-market externalities (e.g., water quality, GHG emissions).
⁴A catastrophic event can be defined as an event or accident that has more than 10 human fatalities, affects an area greater than 1000 ha, or leads to extinction or extirpation of a species.
⁵For example this measure could be the percent of all social, economic and environmental indicators identified via stakeholder consultation or the percent of the 35 indicators listed here and in McBride et al. [4] for which relevant baseline, target, and performance data are reported and made available to the public on a timely basis (at least annually).