Communicating bioenergy: A growing challenge

Bioenergy is rapidly growing in many parts of the world. But continued investments in bioenergy do not depend entirely on technological advances, feedstock availability, and economic conditions. The social acceptance of bioenergy by the general public appears to be essential to the political legitimacy of the bioenergy industry, and the willingness of policy-makers to introduce or maintain supportive policy schemes for bioenergy. In the context of Europe, this perspective argues that communication strategies will become increasingly important for the bioenergy industry as it continues to expand. In short, this perspective discusses four main questions, including: What is the current social acceptance of bioenergy among citizens in Europe? What are the key lessons from experiences with communication on bioenergy? What are the emerging 'hot' topics for the bioenergy industry? What international efforts are underway to inform the general public about bioenergy? Overall, this perspective aims to provide insights into the linkages between the social acceptance and the political legitimacy of bioenergy, and the role of communication strategies. (C) 2010 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Lt

Modelling short-rotation coppice and tree planting for urban carbon management - a citywide analysis

© 2015 British Ecological Society The capacity of urban areas to deliver provisioning ecosystem services is commonly overlooked and underutilized. Urban populations have globally increased fivefold since 1950, and they disproportionately consume ecosystem services and contribute to carbon emissions, highlighting the need to increase urban sustainability and reduce environmental impacts of urban dwellers. Here, we investigated the potential for increasing carbon sequestration, and biomass fuel production, by planting trees and short-rotation coppice (SRC), respectively, in a mid-sized UK city as a contribution to meeting national commitments to reduce CO2 emissions. Iterative GIS models were developed using high-resolution spatial data. The models were applied to patches of public and privately owned urban greenspace suitable for planting trees and SRC, across the 73 km2 area of the city of Leicester. We modelled tree planting with a species mix based on the existing tree populations, and SRC with willow and poplar to calculate biomass production in new trees, and carbon sequestration into harvested biomass over 25 years. An area of 11 km2 comprising 15% of the city met criteria for tree planting and had the potential over 25 years to sequester 4200 tonnes of carbon above-ground. Of this area, 5·8 km2 also met criteria for SRC planting and over the same period this could yield 71 800 tonnes of carbon in harvested biomass. The harvested biomass could supply energy to over 1566 domestic homes or 30 municipal buildings, resulting in avoided carbon emissions of 29 236 tonnes of carbon over 25 years when compared to heating by natural gas. Together with the net carbon sequestration into trees, a total reduction of 33 419 tonnes of carbon in the atmosphere could be achieved in 25 years by combined SRC and tree planting across the city. Synthesis and applications. We demonstrate that urban greenspaces in a typical UK city are underutilized for provisioning ecosystem services by trees and especially SRC, which has high biomass production potential. For urban greenspace management, we recommend that planting SRC in urban areas can contribute to reducing food-fuel conflicts on agricultural land and produce renewable energy sources close to centres of population and demand

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

Sources of variability in greenhouse gas and energy balances for biofuel production: a systematic review

Across the energy sector, alternatives to fossil fuels are being developed, in response to the dual drivers of climate change and energy security. For transport, biofuels have the greatest potential to replace fossil fuels in the short-to medium term. However, the ecological benefits of biofuels and the role that their deployment can play in mitigating climate change are being called into question. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely used approach that enables the energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of biofuel production to be calculated. Concerns have nevertheless been raised that published data show widely varying and sometimes contradictory results. This review describes a systematic review of GHG emissions and energy balance data from 44 LCA studies of first- and second-generation biofuels. The information collated was used to identify the dominant sources of GHG emissions and energy requirements in biofuel production and the key sources of variability in published LCA data. Our analysis revealed three distinct sources of variation: (1) 'real' variability in parameters e.g. cultivation; (2) 'methodological' variability due to the implementation of the LCA method; and (3) 'uncertainty' due to parameters rarely included and poorly quantified. There is global interest in developing a sustainability assessment protocol for biofuels. Confidence in the results of such an assessment can only be assured if these areas of uncertainty and variability are addressed. A more defined methodology is necessary in order to allow effective and accurate comparison of results. It is also essential that areas of uncertainty such as impacts on soil carbon stocks and fluxes are included in LCA assessments, and that further research is conducted to enable a robust calculation of impacts under different land-use change scenarios. Without the inclusion of these parameters, we cannot be certain that biofuels are really delivering GHG savings compared with fossil fuel

Climate policy innovation: a sociotechnical transitions perspective

Seeking to develop a novel understanding of how climate policy innovation (CPI) emerges and spreads, we conceptualise three types of CPIs – genuinely original, diffusion based, and reframing based – and relate these to the sociotechnical transitions literature, particularly the multi-level perspective (MLP) that explains change through interaction between ‘niche’, ‘regime’, and ‘landscape’ levels. Selected climate-related transport policies in Finland, Sweden, and the UK are used to illustrate five hypotheses that connect these concepts from the MLP to particular types of CPI. ‘Original’ policy innovation may be uncommon in contexts with major sunk investments such as transport, principally because sociotechnical regimes tend to be resistant to political pressures for change originating at the same level. Nonetheless, the MLP posits that regimes are subject to influence by pressures originating at both niche and landscape levels. Given that policy reframing is relatively common, it may offer a key entry point for CPI in the short to medium term

EU Policies on Bioenergy and their Potential Clash with the WTO

The paper outlines EU policy on bioenergy, including biofuels, in the context of its policy initiatives to promote renewable energy to combat greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. The EU's Member States are responsible for implementing EU policy: thus, the UK's Renewables Obligation on electricity suppliers and its Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation and road-fuel tax rebates are examined. It is unlikely that EU policy is in conflict with the WTO Agreement on Agriculture or that on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, but its provisions on environmental sustainability criteria could be problematic. Copyright (c) 2009 The Author. Journal compilation (c) 2009 The Agricultural Economics Society.