Abstract
South Africa has limited oil reserves and its
transportation sector mostly depends on imported petroleum
products. Renewable fuels, such as biodiesel, have potential to
extend and diversify South African energy supply, and help the
nation to cope with energy security and emissions issues. The
renewability and environmental benefits of biodiesel have been
illustrated in several life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. South
Africa is in initial phase of establishing large scale commercial
biodiesel industries and it is sensible to measure biodiesel’s life
cycle performance. This study uses secondary data from
literatures to develop a life cycle inventory on farming, crushing
and conversion capacity of soybean and then conduct LCA of
soybean biodiesel production in South Africa. The LCA results
indicate that soybean biodiesel is renewable, environmentally
sustainable and economically viable. Soybean biodiesel yields
125% more useful energy than the energy requires to make it,
saves 31.5% GHG emissions compared to fossil diesel, and on
average returns 1.39 times the cost of the energy input.