The Biobased Economy (introductory modules of societal aspects)
The Biobased Economy (introductory modules of societal aspects)
Impact of a Biobased Economy on workers and chains
A transition from the current economy which is based on fossil resources, to a biobased economy will have profound impacts on existing production chains. Industries and their workers will have to adapt to these changes, or disappear together with the old economy. At the same time new opportunities are already taking shape. The most evident change is that the production chains are becoming circular, ideally all waste streams will be used as sources in other industries.
1.1 The circular chains
Biobased research and production clusters are being set up, for example in the east of The Netherlands and in the biobased delta. The main advantages of these clusters are that infrastructure and knowledge can be shared, which can be crucial for start-up companies. At the same time, the waste stream of one company can be used by its neighbor to produce other products.
1.2 Integrating or separating the chains for food and products?
With a growing demand for biomass, there is a rising competition for the claims on natural resources. One of the suggested solutions for this might be to divide the chains for food and products or fuel, with different crops for food and non-food. In this way rising prices for biobased products do not immediately lead to an increase of the prices of food. However, this does not solve the problem of the limited natural resources such as land, water and nutrients. A complete separation between the chains might also weaken the needed flexibility of the production chains.
The following figure shows an example of how several chains can be integrated.
Source: Cherubini, Francesco, et al. "Toward a common classification approach for biorefinery systems." Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining 3.5 (2009): 534-546.
1.3 Circular production
To transition to a biobased economy will include implications in transportation of raw materials, agriculture and global trade. Since Europe does not have enough arable land to produce sufficient biomaterial for the domestic production of energy carriers, materials and platform chemicals, biomass will have to be imported.
1.4 The CO2 cycle
Not all carbon dioxide release is the same: there is a difference between carbon dioxide in the CO2 cycle and carbon that is added to the cycle. Plants use CO2 to make sugars and need it to grow. When the biomass of plants decomposes, the carbon is released again into the atmosphere until it is taken up by other plants. In this cycle, there is no net accumulation of carbon dioxide. However, one of the biggest problems with fossil fuels is that it brings greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere which have not been in the carbon cycle for millions of years.
1.5 Value pyramid and cascading
Cascading is the process of taking the most valuable components from biomass first, until all valuable components are used. The valuable components can schematically be pictured in the value pyramid, with the high value, low volume on top, going down to the lowest value with the highest volume.
(Chances for biomass Integrated valorisation of biomass resources. Cat-Agrofood, Wageningen UR, 2012)
The leftovers can then be burned to produce heat or electricity. Even though it is wasteful to use the biomass before these valuable components are taken out, this still often happens today.
The materials are ideally used in already existing production chains.
The term full valorization (vierkantsverwaarding) is especially used in the pork meat industry, where all parts of the animal are valorized to make the business profitable. This method can also be applied in different sectors.
1.6 What will change for the workers during the transition
There are a lot opportunities for rural laborers in a BBE. One of the ways would be by organizing a more decentralized production of biomaterials. This can be done by setting-up bio-refinery plants in close proximity of farms. The refineries can lead to a more efficient use with a higher yield.
The opportunities for small scale farmers in developing countries could increase due to a amelioration of different levels of organization, for example trough setting up co-operations.
Obviously, a lot of jobs in fossil based industries will also be lost, from offshore drilling projects, to refinement and production plants. Some jobs will have a biobased equivalent: while fossil oil refineries will be closing, bio refineries will be needed, to obtain high value chemicals and to produce biofuels with an high energy density trough pyrolysis. New jobs will also emerge, such as “roofdoctors”.
Farmers in the EU are afraid of foreign competition, at the same time NGO’s are concerned about the rights and dispositions of foreign farmers, especially in 3rd world countries.
1.7 Hurdles in developing the BBE
Investments in the biobased economy are still seen as relatively high risk, for several reasons:
biobased chains require new connections between the agribusiness (plant breeding and processing) and the chemical industry. At this moment, the petrochemical industry does not prioritize the transition to biobased raw materials because of the low oil price, and they see other concerns such as the lowering of production costs, and making the production more efficient and eco-friendly. The different stakeholders in the chains often find it difficult to connect, and understand each other’s needs and production processes.
The current diversity of promising biobased chemicals is still very narrow
The performances of the biobased products is often (much) lower than the petrochemical equivalents
New, often expensive, technologies are needed for the production of the biobased products
There is still uncertainty if the market will adopt the new biobased products, which makes the investments risky
Farmers and rural communities have often been described to benefit from a BBE.
A BBE could be beneficial for the European economy. A large proportion of the current EU budget goes to subsidies for farmers, around 29 billion € a year. The idea that industrial biotech could make agriculture more profitable and less dependent on subsidies is therefore important to relieve the overall EU budget worries.
However, a transition towards a biobased economy will not necessarily be positive for everyone. The crop processors will for example need large amounts of reliable and cheap supplies of feedstock, which could go against the interests of farmers. There are already tensions between farmers and the agribusiness, farmers in the European Union have become worried by the idea of foreign competition and lobbied therefore actively against cheap biomass import. This lobby was mostly concentrated against the import of Latin-American biomass. The European farmers want a minimum price on crops and fight against the pressure on them in commercial negotiations.
“This tension was exposed during the recent reform of the EU’s sugar regime. Refunds were already granted to the European chemical industry for its purchases of protected European sugar, since this put it at a disadvantage compared with international competitors who could access the commodity at world prices. Seeing an opportunity to extend this system, EuropaBio lobbied the EU to adopt a two-tier price system whereby sugar for all nonfood would be priced at world market levels and, to improve security of supply, would come through duty-free imports if necessary- a market, albeit a lower priced one, that EU farmers wanted to keep for themselves” (source: Richardson 2012 p288, EuropaBio, 2005)
The growing power of agribusiness
There are two ways in which people have learned two control biological processes into their advantage. The first one is “appropriationism”, in which the growth of crops is controlled by controlling the environmental growth conditions: irrigation instead of rainfall, artificial fertilizer instead of manure and commercial plant varieties instead of indigenous plants.
The second way is “substitutionism”, in which chemical components of plants are produced in factories instead of the traditional field. An example of this is the liquid sweetener corn syrup (HFCS), made from the conversion of starch (from corn) to a glucose-fructose syrup (isoglucose). This process made it possible to not only transfer the production physically from a tropical to a temperate environment but also from an agricultural to an industrial sphere. Sugar cane farmers in developing countries suffered since their export was diminished. This example comes from the U.S., The production of HFCS in the European Union is subjected to a production quota of 5% of the sugar production. This quota protects the more traditional sugar beet farmers, similar in the way of a lot of other agricultural products quota in the EU.
The combined subsitutionism and appropriationism of the modern food industry has given it a lot of power over both the production and the obtaining of the source materials. At the same time the historic connection between food and crop had been separated. The farmers, especially the ones operating on the lower scale, turned out to be on the losing end of the deal. Their autonomy was very much shrunk because of a monopoly of both buyers and suppliers. Because of the falling amount of sugar production in the UK, British Sugar now grows a large portion of sugar beets for the production of biofuels itself instead of buying from farmers. The managing director of British Sugar, Gino De Jaegher has said in 2010: “I know growers hate us doing it but if they were in my shoes, they would do the same. And if I were in their shoes I would hate it with venom – but at the same time I would understand why British Sugar is doing it.”
The growth and monopolization and industrialization (for example with robots) of large farms may also lead to a shrink of rural communities. Jobs of small farmers can also be lost when their product is replaced.
According to the ecological modernization theory, that nature (or the world in general) can and should function in a way to support the human economy. According to this theory, clear human problems can also effectively and permanently be solved with technological solutions. One of the problems which is often overlooked in this theory is that the qualitative role, or the “use value” of living biomass, is overlooked in favour of its quantative or exchange value, the money that is earned by selling the goods.The waste from crops for example also plays a role in renewing soil and forests can hold moisture and stabilize mountain slopes which can help to make certain places more fit for human habitation. When grassland or rainforest is transformed into farmland for biofuels, CO2 and other greenhouse gasses are released from the soil, annulling the greenhouse gas reduction that was to be made with the biofuels.
1.8 Reduce reuse and recycle
Sustainable biobased production is stimulated and made more competitive by several financial initiatives, but a shift towards a BBE will also involve a change in the behavior of consumers. The choices of individuals have a lot of influence on the direction and speed of the development of a BBE: through consumer choices (what, how and where people buy things), political choices (what they vote) and the level of acceptance of new technologies.
The choices are made in a combination of self-interest and interest for the public good. In times of perceived crises, people tend to behave in a more self-interested manner.
The limits of biomass availability for energy (extension of sub chapter 2.3)
“transform our fields and forests into this century’s oil wells”
(McCormick, 2010, p.355)
One of the problems that first arise if we would only use sustainably grown resources is an energy shortage: to get an idea of how absurdly luxurious and unsustainable fossil fuel consumption is, it is good to look at how long it took for the reserves to form (400 million years) and how long it will take to deplete these reserves (most probably less than 400 years). During each day then we are using an amount of fuel that took more than 2000 years to produce.1 These figures also make clear that it will be impossible or at least very difficult to replace the fossil fuels with biological alternatives without decreasing our energy consumption. According to the NGO EcoNexus there will also be a shortage in biomass that can be used for second generation biofuels. The greatest fear is that the scarcity for biomass is combatted by turning over large areas of the world into monocultures.
In the next short text, David MacKay explains why energy from biological sources will not contribute much to our energy mix. He writes about the UK, which has a relatively large area which could be used to grow biological material.
Solar biomass
All of a sudden, you know, we may be in the energy business by being able to grow grass on the ranch! And have it harvested and converted into energy. That’s what’s close to happening.
George W. Bush, February 2006
All available bioenergy solutions involve first growing green stuff, and then doing something with the green stuff. How big could the energy collected by the green stuff possibly be? There are four main routes to get energy from solar-powered biological systems:
1. We can grow specially-chosen plants and burn them in a power station that produces electricity or heat or both. We’ll call this “coal substitution.”
2. We can grow specially-chosen plants (oil-seed rape, sugar cane, or corn, say), turn them into ethanol or biodiesel, and shove that into cars, trains, planes or other places where such chemicals are useful. Or we might cultivate genetically-engineered bacteria, cyanobacteria, or algae that directly produce hydrogen, ethanol, or butanol, or even electricity. We’ll call all such approaches “petroleum substitution.”
3. We can take by-products from other agricultural activities and burn them in a power station. The by-products might range from straw (a by-product of Weetabix) to chicken poo (a by-product of McNuggets). Burning by-products is coal substitution again, but using ordinary plants, not the best high-energy plants. A power station that burns agricultural by-products won’t deliver as much power per unit area of farmland as an optimized biomass-growing facility, but it has advantage that it doesn’t monopolize the land. Burning methane gas from landfill sites is a similar way of getting energy, but it’s sustainable only as long as we have a sustainable source of junk to keep putting into the landfill sites. (Most of the landfill methane comes from wasted food; people in Britain throw away about 300 g of food per day per person.) Incinerating household waste is another slightly less roundabout way of getting power from solar biomass.
4. We can grow plants and feed them directly to energy-requiring humans or other animals.
For all of these processes, the first staging post for the energy is in a chemical molecule such as a carbohydrate in a green plant. We can therefore estimate the power obtainable from any and all of these processes by estimating how much power could pass through that first staging post. All the subsequent steps involving tractors, animals, chemical facilities, land- fill sites, or power stations can only lose energy.
So the power at the first staging post is an upper bound on the power available from all plant-based power solutions. So, let’s simply estimate the power at the first staging post. The average harvestable power of sunlight in Britain is 100 W/m2 . The most efficient plants in Europe are about 2%-efficient at turning solar energy into carbohydrates, which would suggest that plants might deliver 2 W/m2 ; however, their efficiency drops at higher light levels, and the best performance of any energy crops in Europe is closer to 0.5 W/m2 . Let’s cover 75% of the country with quality green stuff. That’s 3000 m2 per person devoted to bio-energy. This is the same as the British land area currently devoted to agriculture. So the maximum power available, ignoring all the additional costs of growing, harvesting, and processing the greenery, is
0.5 W/m2 × 3000 m2 per person = 36 kWh/d per person.
Wow. That’s not very much, considering the outrageously generous assumptions we just made, to try to get a big number. If you wanted to get biofuels for cars or planes from the greenery, all the other steps in the chain from farm to spark plug would inevitably be inefficient. I think it’d be optimistic to hope that the overall losses along the processing chain would be as small as 33%. Even burning dried wood in a good wood boiler loses 20% of the heat up the chimney. So surely the true potential power from biomass and biofuels cannot be any bigger than 24 kWh/d per person. And don’t forget, we want to use some of the greenery to make food for us and for our animal companions.
Could genetic engineering produce plants that convert solar energy to chemicals more efficiently? It’s conceivable; but I haven’t found any scientific publication predicting that plants in Europe could achieve net power production beyond 1 W/m2.
I’ll pop 24 kWh/d per person onto the green stack, emphasizing that I think this number is an over-estimate – I think the true maximum power that we could get from biomass will be smaller because of the losses in farming and processing.
I think one conclusion is clear: biofuels can’t add up – at least, not in countries like Britain, and not as a replacement for all transport fuels. Even leaving aside biofuels’ main defects – that their production competes with food, and that the additional inputs required for farming and processing often cancel out most of the delivered energy – biofuels made from plants, in a European country like Britain, can deliver so little power, I think they are scarcely worth talking about.
Section around energy from biological sources, from chapter 6 of the very informative book “Sustainable Energy, Without the Hot Air”, by David JC MacKay (last online version was updated august 2015 and is available on http://www.withouthotair.com
David Mackay also has an TEDx video, in which he explains is views:
[1] Nuclear energy does not emit directly any greenhouse gasses, but it is still seen by most people as unsustainable because of the finite amount of economically accessible uranium. The accessible amount of Thorium which is used in some new reactors is a lot higher, but can still not be seen as completely sustainable.
Stability and changes in complex systems
It is often assumed that changes in ecosystems appear gradually and smoothly: the dead sea becomes slowly salter with the evaporation of the water, and the amount of fish in the oceans is diminishing because of extensive fishing. A forest becomes gradually smaller when trees are cut down, and the CO2 level in the atmosphere is increasing in an increasing but smooth way with the burning of fossil fuels.
There is however more and more proof that a lot of systems can suddenly switch from one state to another. Although such an event is usually triggered by one changed variable, the underlying reason is a loss of resilience. To maintain a stable and sustainable ecosystem it is therefore important to focus on maintaining this resilience or flexibility.
Examples of systems where such abrupt shifts occur are epileptic seizures, asthma attacks and possibly migraine attack in medicine, and in finance we sometimes see systematic market crashes. In ecosystems these abrupt shifts can occur in fish and wildlife populations, woodlands that suddenly become grasslands or vice-versa. Clear shallow lakes can abruptly become murky. Coral reefs can quickly disappear and even deserts appear and vanish in sudden patterns.[1]
3.1 Examples of changes in complex systems, the risk of a climate flip over.
How Caribbean coral reefs can suddenly disappear
Everyone who has had the opportunity to snorkel in the sea around a coral reef (or anyone who watches nature shows on television) knows how divers this ecosystem is. Parrotfish nibble on corrals, a little “Nemo” hides away in anemones and larger fish swim in large schools. Although the system seems stable, it can suddenly shift to another stable state, a state with hardly any fish, dead corrals and blooming algae. This shift has several underlying causes, which make the system vulnerable to the actual triggers of the shift. Intensive land-use causes nutrient-loading which allows algae to grow in higher numbers. This nevertheless does not directly trigger an algae bloom, since intensive fishing also leads to an increased number of sea urchins. These urchins control the algae population, by scraping them of the corrals. However, once a pathogen reduces the number of sea urchins, and herbivorous fish have also been diminished, the corrals can quickly be overgrown with fleshy brown algae. While young algae are easily eaten by urchins and fish, adult algae are far less edible. This makes the switch difficult to reverse, also because the algae prevent the settlement of coral larvae. This scenario occurred in 1983 in the Florida Keys, and the coral reefs are still recovering.
Three lessons can be learned from this example:
1. A shift in dominance between two different life forms can result in a shift of a contrasting ecosystem state.
2. The trigger that causes the abrupt shift is usually a random stochastic event, such as the pathogen in the Coral reefs example.
3. Biological, physical and chemical mechanisms are involved in stabilizing feedbacks, which can prevent a sudden shift.
Source: Scheffer et al. (2001)
Societal changes and their tipping points
“Whatever the explanation is, adult humans apparently have a tendency to stick to a certain mode of behavior even if it is rationally a bad choice. This lock-in mechanism, caused by apparent self-reinforcing adherence to a mode of behavior, tends to promote inertia, a lack of responsiveness to changes in the environment.”
Source: p.5 marten Scheffer and Frances R. Westley. The Evolutionary Basis of Rigidity: Locks in Cells, Minds and Society. Ecology and Society 12(2):36
Sudden shifts in societies
The theory of Rational choice implicates that a choice should not be made in accordance to the previous investment but by the expected future costs and benefits. Regardless of the theory, people still tend to use the prior investment in the decision process. People stick to the tactics that have invested in in the past, regardless of the current situation or predictions which render the choice irrational. -This Sunk-cost effect is even larger in groups of people, because people in groups usually try to maintain a previously reached consensus. The implications of this irrational behavior is that groups stay longer than necessary in unfavourable situations, this has even led in the past to collapses of whole societies.[2]
There are several historical examples of sunk costs situations in societies. Around the 15th century, Norwegians on Greenland were faced with a sudden period of extreme cold. Because of this, the harvests of their crops became increasingly less productive and they became more and more undernourished. Still, they stuck to their known agriculture techniques instead of adapting to their neighbor’s Inuit skills who were well fed because of their fishing and hunting methods. The Norwegians did not survive, the whole colony died from famine. Another famous example are the Meso-American societies who built enormous temples which can still be admired today. These enormous structures were one of the reasons why the Mayas who lived there felt unable to quickly leave in times of severe drought, leading to their decline.
In recent history there is the example of the supersonic passenger plane, the Concorde. Before the completion of the airplane it was already clear that it would be very unlikely to make a profit with the project. But because there was so much money invested, the UK and France did not want to pull the plug.[3] Today we see the same with large building projects and the military F-35 Program, better known as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF): the costs have risen extremely, and there are several better and cheaper alternatives available.
At this moment there is still not an immediate societal problem that mobilizes a large part of the population. Because of the relatively low oil prices, alternatives are comparatively expensive, making it difficult for consumers and investors alike to move away from fossil reserves. The energy related CO2 emissions have become stabilized over the last two years (2014 and 2015), while the world’s economy was growing, for the first time in 40 years.[4]
As long as there still is cheap oil available, the most distinct problems for which the BBE is a solution (unavailability of energy and resources)might be too abstract for a lot of people. At the same time, there is a moral duty to abstain society from these problems, therefore action must be taken before the challenges are directly tangible. One of the ways to involve people in an earlier stage is through the production of social representations and public engagement. For example by organizing small biobased projects such as a community dinner, where all elements are made with biobased materials, including the plates and menus.[5] Another way of involving a larger part of society is by not communicating technological changes “towards” people, but to communicate with them in an early technological phase.
In this conference talk, Marten Scheffer explains how changes in complex systems are characterized by tipping points. In the last 5 minutes he also describes changes in society:
According to Jan Rotmans who is professor in transitions and sustainability, we are currently in a state of transformative change. Because we are experiencing a system crisis, we need to transform ourselves and our society in a bottom-up way. One of the ways that this can be done is by the emerging power of the Do It Yourself (DIY) society. New jobs: “roofdoctors”, gardeners who are gardening on the roofs. Organic governance, moving with the transformative times. In this TEDx video he explains his ideas:
Examples of changes in complex systems, the risk of a climate flip over
How Caribbean coral reefs can suddenly disappear
Everyone who has had the opportunity to snorkel in the sea around a coral reef (or anyone who watches nature shows on television) knows how divers this ecosystem is. Parrotfish nibble on corrals, a little “Nemo” hides away in anemones and larger fish swim in large schools. Although the system seems stable, it can suddenly shift to another stable state, a state with hardly any fish, dead corrals and blooming algae. This shift has several underlying causes, which make the system vulnerable to the actual triggers of the shift. Intensive land-use causes nutrient-loading which allows algae to grow in higher numbers. This nevertheless does not directly trigger an algae bloom, since intensive fishing also leads to an increased number of sea urchins. These urchins control the algae population, by scraping them of the corrals. However, once a pathogen reduces the number of sea urchins, and herbivorous fish have also been diminished, the corrals can quickly be overgrown with fleshy brown algae. While young algae are easily eaten by urchins and fish, adult algae are far less edible. This makes the switch difficult to reverse, also because the algae prevent the settlement of coral larvae. This scenario occurred in 1983 in the Florida Keys, and the coral reefs are still recovering.
Three lessons can be learned from this example:
1. A shift in dominance between two different life forms can result in a shift of a contrasting ecosystem state.
2. The trigger that causes the abrupt shift is usually a random stochastic event, such as the pathogen in the Coral reefs example.
3. Biological, physical and chemical mechanisms are involved in stabilizing feedbacks, which can prevent a sudden shift.
Source: Scheffer et al. (2001)
Societal changes and their tipping points
“Whatever the explanation is, adult humans apparently have a tendency to stick to a certain mode of behavior even if it is rationally a bad choice. This lock-in mechanism, caused by apparent self-reinforcing adherence to a mode of behavior, tends to promote inertia, a lack of responsiveness to changes in the environment.”
Source: p.5 marten Scheffer and Frances R. Westley. The Evolutionary Basis of Rigidity: Locks in Cells, Minds and Society. Ecology and Society 12(2):36
Sudden shifts in societies
The theory of Rational choice implicates that a choice should not be made in accordance to the previous investment but by the expected future costs and benefits. Regardless of the theory, people still tend to use the prior investment in the decision process. People stick to the tactics that have invested in in the past, regardless of the current situation or predictions which render the choice irrational. -This Sunk-cost effect is even larger in groups of people, because people in groups usually try to maintain a previously reached consensus. The implications of this irrational behavior is that groups stay longer than necessary in unfavourable situations, this has even led in the past to collapses of whole societies.[1]
There are several historical examples of sunk costs situations in societies. Around the 15th century, Norwegians on Greenland were faced with a sudden period of extreme cold. Because of this, the harvests of their crops became increasingly less productive and they became more and more undernourished. Still, they stuck to their known agriculture techniques instead of adapting to their neighbor’s Inuit skills who were well fed because of their fishing and hunting methods. The Norwegians did not survive, the whole colony died from famine. Another famous example are the Meso-American societies who built enormous temples which can still be admired today. These enormous structures were one of the reasons why the Mayas who lived there felt unable to quickly leave in times of severe drought, leading to their decline.
In recent history there is the example of the supersonic passenger plane, the Concorde. Before the completion of the airplane it was already clear that it would be very unlikely to make a profit with the project. But because there was so much money invested, the UK and France did not want to pull the plug.[2] Today we see the same with large building projects and the military F-35 Program, better known as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF): the costs have risen extremely, and there are several better and cheaper alternatives available.
At this moment there is still not an immediate societal problem that mobilizes a large part of the population. Because of the relatively low oil prices, alternatives are comparatively expensive, making it difficult for consumers and investors alike to move away from fossil reserves. The energy related CO2 emissions have become stabilized over the last two years (2014 and 2015), while the world’s economy was growing, for the first time in 40 years.[3]
As long as there still is cheap oil available, the most distinct problems for which the BBE is a solution (unavailability of energy and resources)might be too abstract for a lot of people. At the same time, there is a moral duty to abstain society from these problems, therefore action must be taken before the challenges are directly tangible. One of the ways to involve people in an earlier stage is through the production of social representations and public engagement. For example by organizing small biobased projects such as a community dinner, where all elements are made with biobased materials, including the plates and menus.[4] Another way of involving a larger part of society is by not communicating technological changes “towards” people, but to communicate with them in an early technological phase.
In this conference talk, Marten Scheffer explains how changes in complex systems are characterized by tipping points. In the last 5 minutes he also describes changes in society:
According to Jan Rotmans who is professor in transitions and sustainability, we are currently in a state of transformative change. Because we are experiencing a system crisis, we need to transform ourselves and our society in a bottom-up way. One of the ways that this can be done is by the emerging power of the Do It Yourself (DIY) society. New jobs: “roofdoctors”, gardeners who are gardening on the roofs. Organic governance, moving with the transformative times. In this TEDx video he explains his ideas:
The best way to assess the sustainability of a certain product or process is by evaluating it from cradle to grave, this is called a Life Cycle Analysis or Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). When performing such an analysis it is important to first exactly define the important variables and what exactly should be assessed (goal and scope). A LCA question for example not “is product A or B more sustainable?” but rather “what are the CO2 emissions during the complete life cycle of product A and B?”. The complete process should be analyzed, including for example the transportation of the materials, which makes an LCA often very complicated.
This video explains in a short and clear way how a LCA is performed, using an iphone as an example.
Societal debates
The goal of the societal debate around the bio-based society is to allow society to participate in the making of decisions about the possible future scientific implementations. This can happen on different levels, depending on the stakeholders. Assessing the success of the debate can be a difficult task since there is not one debate around the bio-based economy, or bio-based society. Instead, different stakeholders hold different discourses in several, intertwined debates. The economic stakeholders will focus on profit maximization, while environmental groups may want to abandon profits and push to a maximization of wildlife and the minimizing of global warming. The different stakeholders will most likely not agree eventually, but might come closer to understanding and respecting each other. To qualify as a debate, the goals and issues at stake should first be described. These goals can be depolarization, policy formation, public awareness, finding a commonly desired direction in technical progress, or others. After one of the debates the stakeholders must be questioned about their participation. It might be difficult to define the end of the debate as debates might take years or decades, especially the polarized ones (e.g.: GMO for food, abortions). In this respect, it would make sense to look at a particular time frame, e.g. five years, and ask the stakeholders about certain issues throughout the course of the debate. In a research report ordered by Commisie Genetische Modificatie (COGEM), the qualification of an open platform for different stakeholders was done by interviewing selected participants, which gave valuable results. [2]
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Auteur
David Louwrier
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2016-06-24 16:03:42
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