Biofuels and Bioeconomy

Social-economic issues of the Bioeconomy

Bio-based products and processes may produce (intended or unintended) impacts on human society and the environment. These impacts may occur along the entire value chain of bio-based products and can be linked to the production of biomass, to biorefinery (and related) processes, or to the actual characteristics and effects of the new, bio-based products. One single product or process can have several impacts, which are also influenced by factors that are not related to the product or process. Since these impacts are context-specific and can be partly positive and partly negative, it is challenging to state whether the overall impact of a product or process is negative or positive. This chapter presents a typology of the social, economic and environmental impacts of the bioeconomy. It draws on the work that has been carried out within the FP7 project “Systems Analysis Tools Framework for the EU Bio-Based Economy Strategy” (SAT-BBE)2 which aimed at providing a design of a system analyses tool framework to assess and address the short-term and long-term challenges related to the European bioeconomy.