Project
Governance Arrangements for the Reflexive Innovation of Biorefinery Technology (PhD project - Jan Starke)
Using renewable plants instead of fossil oil to make energy, materials, and other products: EU policymakers have high hopes in the bioeconomy to mitigate climate change and end the dependency on fossils. Biorefineries are a key enabling technology in this endeavor. However, critics fear negative effects on environmental quality, food security, and biodiversity. The bioeconomy is thus cherished by decision makers, but also controversial. In this project, we aim to understand these bioeconomy controversies and how they evolve over time.
Background
The European Commission promotes a sustainable and circular bioeconomy to tackle challenges, such as climate change and the (geopolitical) dependency on fossil resources, such as mineral oil and gas. A bioeconomy describes the production of products, such as energy and warmth, food and feed, fuels and gas, cosmetics or pharmaceuticals, based on bio-based resources instead of fossil ones. Bio-based resources include crops, wood, agricultural residues, and algae. Biorefineries aim to produce a range of these products in a single factory.
Despite hopes of policymakers that a bioeconomy can help to reduce CO2 emissions, boost economic development of rural and remote regions, and reduce waste, the bioeconomy is also controversial. Critics fear negative impacts, for instance on food security (should crops rather be used in the food system than for making energy and materials?), biodiversity (does a bioeconomy promote monocultures and intensive agriculture?), and environmental quality (what about water use and quality as well as land use?). Moreover, a bioeconomy could lock in unsustainable scales of energy and material consumption and solidify global injustices.
Description
In this research project, we aim to understand these controversies about biorefineries and the broader bioeconomy in the European Union. We try to understand:
- How controversies evolve during such a long-term transition like developing a sustainable and circular bioeconomy;
- How controversies ‘look like’ and change over time on EU level, thus who says what and why;
- How controversies are considered in local bioeconomy projects;
- How reflexive towards societal controversies our own research project is.
The project is part of the EU-financed ‘AgRefine’ project, which aims to develop elements of a novel biorefinery technology, the so-called Three-Phase Bioreactor. In the three phases of (1) raw material preparation, (2) anaerobic digestion, and (3) downstream processing, the reactor is designed to produce biogas, fertilizers, lactic acid, and succinic acid out of grass and seaweed silage. Work package 1 aims to investigate different technical elements of the reactor, such as biosensors, membranes, and stirring design. Work package 2 concerns the assessment of economic, social, and environmental effects of the novel technology. Work package 3 looks at broader economic, legal, and political aspects.
Results
We started by conceptualizing how controversies change throughout a long-term transition, such as the development of a sustainable and circular bioeconomy. We argue that the currently dominant techno-economic engineering perspective in bioeconomy thinking struggles to understand these controversy dynamics. We point out that controversies are inherent to sustainability transitions and pop up again and again in different settings, which we call loci. Moreover, controversies are dynamic, because involved discursive coalitions adjust their argumentation over time and consequently solidify, grow, shrink, merge, or fall apart. Furthermore, controversies can evolve both productively or unproductively.