Research (2017-2023)

Business Interface: Set up and run events for the business community in Ireland to increase their awareness and engagement with the bioeconomy, including workshops and individual meetings.

The bioeconomy will involve radical innovation that may disrupt established routines and create resistance and anxieties, which need to be understood. Development of the bioeconomy will be a socio-technical transition where advancements in technology interact and co-evolve with consumer practices, business, markets, policy, cultural meaning, and infrastructure. In project 3.2, qualitative and quantitative social science research methods are being deployed to understand consumer and citizen perspectives of the bioeconomy. Both are required for acceptance of the concept and its products and services. Acceptance by the consumer is fundamental to market development and acceptance by citizens is essential for governance.

Holistic evaluation of a bioeconomy idea, be that a feedstock, technology, or system, is required to properly understand the impacts and implications of the transition from conventional, fossil resource depleting economy, to a sustainable bioeconomy. The overall goal of these projects was to advance thinking about how life cycle thinking, which is now widely adopted by policy makers in the European Union, can be used to better understanding the impacts (social, environmental, and economic) of bioeconomy projects. The quantitative method, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) offers many advantages for stakeholders wishing to understand the implications of an innovation, including being holistic (cradle to grave/cradle), multi-impact (e.g., climate, water, energy, soil, atmosphere, ecosystems) and having scientifically agreed impact methods and ISO accounting rules. However, many of the norms and rules adopted in practice were devised before the advent of bioeconomy and circular economy concepts. The projects address useful method adaptations to maximise the value of LCA (e.g., assessment of assumptions, attributional vs consequential approaches, stakeholder perception of system function, land use pressures and the expression of impact in terms of ecoefficiency rather than absolute impact). The approach taken is (i) to assess the methodological implications of rules used for environmental life cycle assessment and the development of a readiness level framework linked to LCA (3.3.1), which is the foundation of all other LCA methods, (ii) to develop specific social methods suitable for bioeconomy projects (3.3.2) and (iii) to develop an assessment framework factoring in land use pressure and absolute impacts (3.3.3), with a particular focus on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). All ideas being developed are being tested using case studies selected from platform and spoke research activity (submerged mushroom production, seaweed extraction, cereal storage, alternative farming practices), and because of the Covid-19 situation, they are also being assessed using case studies in Brazil (organic egg production, local farmer cooperative/hotel bioeconomy network and agroforestry production of organic lime).

The objectives of this project are, firstly, exploring how to cultivate consumption of bio-based products; and secondly, to explore societal acceptance of bio-based products. The project seeks to gain a better understanding of consumers’ and wider society’s understanding and interpretation of the bioeconomy, the factors that present consumer and societal acceptance challenges and require effective engagement with consumers and the scientific community in communication with consumers and society regarding bio-based products.

The goal of this project is firstly to demonstrate how the bioeconomy and natural capital approaches are related, and secondly how emerging ecosystem service and natural capital approaches can be applied to inform an environmentally sustainable bioeconomy using pilot case-studies in Ireland.