Biofuels are considered as a promising substitute for fossil fuels
when considering the possible reduction of greenhouse gases emissions.
However limiting their impacts on potential benefits for reducing
climate change is shortsighted. Global sustainability assessments
are necessary to determine the sustainability of supply chains. We
propose a new global criterion based framework enabling a comprehensive
international comparison of bioethanol supply chains. The interest
of this framework is that the selection of the sustainability indicators
is qualified on three criterions: relevance, reliability and adaptability
to the local context. Sustainability issues have been handled along
environmental, social and economical issues. This new framework has
been applied for a specific issue: from a Swiss perspective, is locally
produced bioethanol in Switzerland more sustainable than imported
from Brazil? Thanks to this framework integrating local context in
its indicator definition, Brazilian production of bioethanol is shown
as energy efficient and economically interesting for Brazil. From
a strictly economic point of view, bioethanol production within Switzerland
is not justified for Swiss consumption and questionable for the environmental
issue. The social dimension is delicate to assess due to the lack
of reliable data and is strongly linked to the agricultural policy
in both countries. There is a need of establishing minimum sustainability
criteria for imported bioethanol to avoid unwanted negative or leakage
effects.