Are plants the new oil? Responsible innovation, biorefining and multipurpose agriculture

Bioenergy is seen as one of the options for industrialised countries to wean themselves off fossil fuels. However bioenergy, transport biofuels in particular, has faced considerable environmental and social controversies. Biorefining has been proposed in the UK and Denmark to address these concerns by using biomass efficiently for multiple purposes (food, feed, fuel, chemicals). Drawing from frameworks on responsible innovation, this paper opens up the implicit assumptions within the biorefinery concept about how biomass should be produced.

[1]  Gail Taylor,et al.  Biofuels and the biorefinery concept , 2008 .

[2]  P. Thompson,et al.  The Agricultural Ethics of Biofuels: The Food vs. Fuel Debate , 2012 .

[3]  P. Boucher,et al.  Biofuels under the spotlight: The state of assessment and potential for integration , 2014 .

[4]  J. Mittra,et al.  Twenty-first century bioeconomy: Global challenges of biological knowledge for health and agriculture , 2013 .

[5]  J. Stilgoe,et al.  Developing a framework for responsible innovation* , 2013, The Ethics of Nanotechnology, Geoengineering and Clean Energy.

[6]  Les Levidow,et al.  Innovation Priorities for UK Bioenergy: Technological Expectations within Path Dependence , 2013 .

[7]  K. Griffin,et al.  The Political Economy of Agrarian Change. , 1975 .

[8]  Jules Pretty,et al.  Agri-Culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature , 2002 .

[9]  T. Marsden,et al.  Understanding Alternative Food Networks: Exploring the Role of Short Food Supply Chains in Rural Development , 2003 .

[10]  T. Lang,et al.  Food Wars: The Global Battle for Mouths, Minds and Markets , 2003 .

[11]  D. Goodman.  Rural Europe Redux? Reflections on Alternative Agro‐Food Networks and Paradigm Change , 2004 .

[12]  Geoff A. Wilson,et al.  Multifunctional Agriculture: A Transition Theory Perspective , 2007 .

[13]  Martin Lersch,et al.  History and future of world's most advanced biorefinery in operation , 2012 .

[14]  P. Thompson.  Agricultural ethics: then and now , 2015 .

[15]  Jo U. Smith.  Agroforestry: Reconciling Production with Protection of the Environment A Synopsis of Research Literature , 2010 .

[16]  S. Raman.  Responsive novelty: taking innovation seriously in societal research agendas for synthetic biology , 2015 .

[17]  Kate Millar,et al.  Integrating social and value dimensions into sustainability assessment of lignocellulosic biofuels , 2015, Biomass & bioenergy.

[18]  J. Murdoch,et al.  Quality, Nature, and Embeddedness: Some Theoretical Considerations in the Context of the Food Sector* , 2000 .

[19]  K. Birch.  The knowledge-space dynamic in the UK bioeconomy , 2009 .

[20]  J. Neufeld,et al.  The State of Food and Agriculture , 1970 .

[21]  S. Polasky,et al.  Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt , 2008, Science.

[22]  Paul B. Thompson,et al.  The Agricultural Ethics of Biofuels: A First Look , 2008, The Ethics of Nanotechnology, Geoengineering and Clean Energy.

[23]  S. Padel,et al.  The bio-economy concept and knowledge base in a public goods and farmer perspective , 2012 .

[24]  Paul T. Durbin.  Technology and responsibility , 1987 .

[25]  J. Hansen.  The Danish Biofuel Debate: Coupling Scientific and Politico-Economic Claims , 2014 .

[26]  Greg Latta,et al.  Biomass production from the U.S. forest and agriculture sectors in support of a renewable electricity standard , 2013 .

[27]  A. Gasparatos.  Resource consumption in Japanese agriculture and its link to food security , 2011 .

[28]  S. Wolf,et al.  Cognitive Representations and Institutional Hybridity in Agrofood Innovation , 2004 .

[29]  Ortwin Renn,et al.  SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME , 2007 .

[30]  D. Guston.  “Daddy, Can I Have a Puddle Gator?”: Creativity, Anticipation, and Responsible Innovation , 2013 .

[31]  L. Levidow,et al.  Divergent Paradigms of European Agro-Food Innovation , 2013 .

[32]  A. Bryman.  Social Research Methods , 2001 .

[33]  B. Richardson.  From a Fossil-Fuel to a Biobased Economy: The Politics of Industrial Biotechnology , 2012 .

[34]  M. Kircher.  The transition to a bio‐economy: national perspectives , 2012 .

[35]  Per Ambus,et al.  Strip intercropping strategy for biomass to energy production while on the same time maintaining soil fertility , 2009 .

[36]  M. Mazzocchi,et al.  From Agricultural to Bio-based Economics? Context, State of the Art and Challenges , 2012 .

[37]  K. Roulston.  Data analysis and ‘theorizing as ideology’ , 2001 .

[38]  Robert D. Benford.  An Insider's Critique of the Social Movement Framing Perspective* , 1997 .

[39]  J. Palmer,et al.  Stopping the Unstoppable? A Discursive-Institutionalist Analysis of Renewable Transport Fuel Policy , 2010 .

[40]  Rural Affairs.  UK Bioenergy Strategy. , 2012 .

[41]  Kes McCormick,et al.  The Bioeconomy in Europe: An Overview , 2013 .

[42]  M. Gorman,et al.  A framework for responsible innovation , 2013 .

[43]  David Zilberman,et al.  Technology and the Future Bioeconomy , 2013 .

[44]  Alison Mohr,et al.  Lessons from first generation biofuels and implications for the sustainability appraisal of second generation biofuels☆ , 2013, Energy Policy.

[45]  R. Sonnino,et al.  Beyond the divide: rethinking relationships between alternative and conventional food networks in Europe , 2006 .

[46]  Simon J. Bennett,et al.  From petrochemical complexes to biorefineries? The past and prospective co-evolution of liquid fuels and chemicals production in the UK , 2009 .

[47]  A. Sheppard,et al.  Biosecurity and sustainability within the growing global bioeconomy , 2011 .

[48]  Philip Boucher,et al.  The role of controversy, regulation and engineering in UK biofuel development , 2012 .

[49]  Robert M. Entman,et al.  Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm , 1993 .

[50]  Y.-H Percival Zhang,et al.  Next generation biorefineries will solve the food, biofuels, and environmental trilemma in the energy–food–water nexus , 2013 .

[51]  R. Smolker,et al.  The New Bioeconomy and the Future of Agriculture , 2008 .

[52]  B. Nygard,et al.  De-globalization of Food Markets? Consumer Perceptions of Safe Food: The Case of Norway , 1998 .

[53]  K. Elliott.  The Ethical Significance of Language in the Environmental Sciences: Case Studies from Pollution Research , 2009 .

[54]  L. Levidow,et al.  Sustainable Capital? The Neoliberalization of Nature and Knowledge in the European “Knowledge-based Bio-economy” , 2010 .