How the cap limit for food-crop-based biofuels may affect France’s stakeholders by 2030? A range-based multi-actor multi-criteria analysis

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From 2012 to 2016, the long-term signal in the biofuel market changed almost once per year, leading to a drastic decrease in investments and contributing to multiple production unit closures in France and around Europe. The European Commission proposed a new renewable energy directive that includes a 3.8% cap limit on the contribution of food-crop biofuels by 2030. Given the role of biofuels in green growth, the bioeconomy, and renewable energy incorporation targets, how will this measure affect the stakeholders by 2030? Will it lead to, contribute to, or hamper their sustainability criteria? This paper aims to contribute to this debate by studying the case of France. To this end, our methodology—the range-based multi-actor multi-criteria analysis—aims to (1) explicitly consider the stakeholder groups and their sustainability criteria; (2) evaluate and compare how the cap limit will affect these sustainability criteria whether or not advanced biofuels are deployed by 2030; (3) capture the uncertainty of the context evolution and biofuel capacity to fulfil the stakeholders’ sustainability criteria by means of a Monte Carlo. The results suggest that the cap limit is a double-edged sword for the stakeholders and their sustainability criteria. Shifting towards advanced biofuels while limiting the food-crop biofuels is the better alternative for most of the stakeholders. Nevertheless, given biofuel policy instability and the lost confidence of investors, such a shift may not occur by 2030. In such a case, this paper demonstrates that the cap limit may highly and negatively affect the stakeholders and their sustainability targets, whereas fostering French food-crop biofuel production at its full capacity level constitutes a better alternative. As no alternative is suited to all actors simultaneously, this paper also studies the strengths and weaknesses of these alternatives from each stakeholder groups’ perspective.