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Abstract
A variety of opinions either in favour or
against development of biofuels has risen in the last
years related to the environmental, economic and social
impacts that its diffusion could entail compared to
petroleum. Although the EU, in general, and Spain, in
particular, are strongly supporting the development of
biofuels they highlight that energy planning must be
based on a sound analysis of the impacts of the diverse
alternatives. This poster is a preliminary approach to
this analysis. The main aim is to prioritize a set of
environmental, economic and social objectives to
identify the most relevant issues that would allow
evaluating the impacts of the biofuel production and
consumption in Spain. Analytic Network Process (ANP)
and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) are the
multicriteria decision-making methodologies
implemented to deal with the problem based on experts’
knowledge. The superiority of ANP versus AHP is
discussed and the former is recommended. Results
indicate that the most important objectives for a
sustainable development of biofuels in Spain are
conservation of non-renewable resources, within the
environmental issues, the ease to be technically
implemented in production, storage, distribution, and
consumption, within the economic issues, and the direct
employment in the agro-energy system, within the social
issues.