Life Cycle Assessment of Soybean Biodiesel Production in South Africa: A Preliminary Assessment

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.