UK bioenergy innovation priorities: Making expectations credible in state-industry arenas

AbstractThe UK government has promoted bioenergy for several policy aims. Future expectations for bioenergy innovation encompass various pathways and their potential benefits. Some pathways have been relatively favoured by specific state-industry arrangements, which serve as ‘arenas of expectations’. Through these arrangements, some expectations have been made more credible, thus justifying and directing resource allocation. Conversely, to incentivise private-sector investment, government has sought credibility for its commitment to bioenergy innovation. These dual efforts illustrate the reciprocal character of promise-requirement cycles, whereby promises are turned into requirements for state sponsors as well as for innovators.Collective expectations have been shaped by close exchanges between state bodies, industry and experts. As promoters build collective expectations, their credibility has been linked with UK economic and environmental aims. When encountering technical difficulties or delays in earlier expectations, pathways and their benefits have been broadened, especially through new arenas—as grounds to allocate considerable state investment. Thus the concept ‘arenas of expectations’ helps to explain how some pathways gain favour as innovation priorities

Biofuels and the role of space in sustainable innovation journeys

This paper aims to identify the lessons that should be learnt from how biofuels have been envisioned from the aftermath of the oil shocks of the 1970s to the present,and how these visions compare with biofuel production networks emerging in the 2000s. Working at the interface of sustainable innovation journey research and geographical theories on the spatial unevenness of sustainability transition projects,we show how the biofuels controversy is linked to characteristics of globalised industrial agricultural systems. The legitimacy problems of biofuels cannot be addressed by sustainability indicators or new technologies alone since they arise from the spatial ordering of biofuel production. In the 1970-80s, promoters of bioenergy anticipated current concerns about food security implications but envisioned bioenergy production to be territorially embedded at national or local scales where these issues would be managed. Where the territorial and scalar vision was breached, it was to imagine poorer countries exporting higher-value biofuel to the North rather than the raw material as in the controversial global biomass commodity chains of today. However, controversy now extends to the global impacts of national biofuel systems on food security and greenhouse gas emissions, and to their local impacts becoming more widely known. South/South and North/North trade conflicts are also emerging as are questions over biodegradable wastes and agricultural residues as global commodities. As assumptions of a food-versus-fuel conflict have come to be challenged, legitimacy questions over global agri-business and trade are spotlighted even further. In this context, visions of biofuel development that address these broader issues might be promising. These include large-scale biomass-for-fuel models in Europe that would transform global trade rules to allow small farmers in the global South to compete, and smallscale biofuel systems developed to address local energy needs in the South

Impacts, risks, and governance of climate engineering

Climate engineering is a potential alternative method to curb global warming, and this discipline has garnered considerable attention from the international scientific community including the Chinese scientists. This manuscript provides an overview of several aspects of climate engineering, including its definition, its potential impacts and risk, and its governance status. The overall conclusion is that China is not yet ready to implement climate engineering. However, it is important for China to continue conducting research on climate engineering, particularly with respect to its feasible application within China, its potential social, economic, and environmental impacts, and possible international governance structures and governing principles, with regard to both experimentation and implementation