Bioeconomy

The international debate on biofuels is mostly dominated by environmental and economic aspects while the question of how biofuels can be produced in a socially acceptable way is not systematically tackled. The project "Biofuel as Social Fuel" examines for two regions in Germany and Brazil the social dimension of biofuel production. Timo Kaphengst gave a lecture at the project`s kick-off event stressing the role of certification systems in biofuel governance.

Stephanie Schlegel gave a presentation discussing the current bioenergy policy in the U.S. and the European Union. The presentation focused on the analysis of current support schemes for biofuels and compared the expectations and objectives to the actual impacts and results of bioenergy policy approaches from an environmental, climate and development perspective.

Around the world, biofuels are promoted as the solution to various problems such as security of energy supply and the challenge of climate change. However, numerous recent studies have shown that although bioenergy hasRead more