Biofuel Innovation Research Articles

Biofuels policy and innovation impacts: Evidence from biofuels and agricultural patent indicators

In the early 2000s, governments implemented policies stimulating the use of ethanol and biodiesel to reduce carbon emissions and encourage domestic energy production. Blend mandates requiring gasoline or diesel to contain a minimum percentage of these biofuels were a favored policy instrument. Theoretical work by Clancy and Moschini (2017) concluded that, if innovation were stimulated by mandates, then the socially optimal mandate would be higher than if innovation were not possible. We test the impact of blend mandates and other biofuels policies on innovation using measures of patenting activity that correspond with research effort and research output. Our analysis shows that ethanol blend mandates significantly increased both R&D effort and quality-weighted innovation output in biofuels technologies while reducing the R&D inputs to plant technologies. This suggests that biofuels innovation increased in response to the policies, with firms substituting some R&D effort away from plant technologies research. Despite decreased R&D effort, output of plant innovation held steady as effort shifted to biofuels, supporting the presence of a spillover effect between biofuels innovation and plant innovation. We find that biodiesel blend mandates did not significantly impact R&D efforts in either plant or biofuels technologies. Furthermore, policies other than blend mandates had varying effects, ranging from limited increases in R&D activity to significant decreases in innovation. JEL Codes: O31, O38, Q16, Q48, Q55.

A review of internal combustion engines powered by renewable energy based on ethanol fuel and HCCI technology

<abstract> <p>In general, as compared to conventional combustion engines, the homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine offers better fuel efficiency, NOx, and particulate matter emissions. The HCCI engine, on the other hand, is not connected to the spark plugs or the fuel injection system. This implies that the auto-ignition time and following combustion phase of the HCCI engine are not controlled directly. The HCCI engine will be confined to a short working range due to the cold start, high-pressure rate, combustion noise, and even knocking combustion. Biofuel innovation, such as ethanol-powered HCCI engines, has a lot of promise in today's car industry. As a result, efforts must be made to improve the distinctive characteristics of the engine by turning the engine settings to different ethanol mixtures. This study examines the aspects of ethanol-fueled HCCI engines utilizing homogenous charge preparation procedures. In addition, comparing HCCI engines to other advanced combustion engines revealed their increased importance and prospective consequences. Furthermore, the challenges of transitioning from conventional to HCCI engines are examined, along with potential answers for future upgrade approaches and control tactics.</p> </abstract>

A review of internal combustion engines powered by renewable energy based on ethanol fuel and HCCI technology

<abstract> <p>In general, as compared to conventional combustion engines, the homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine offers better fuel efficiency, NOx, and particulate matter emissions. The HCCI engine, on the other hand, is not connected to the spark plugs or the fuel injection system. This implies that the auto-ignition time and following combustion phase of the HCCI engine are not controlled directly. The HCCI engine will be confined to a short working range due to the cold start, high-pressure rate, combustion noise, and even knocking combustion. Biofuel innovation, such as ethanol-powered HCCI engines, has a lot of promise in today's car industry. As a result, efforts must be made to improve the distinctive characteristics of the engine by turning the engine settings to different ethanol mixtures. This study examines the aspects of ethanol-fueled HCCI engines utilizing homogenous charge preparation procedures. In addition, comparing HCCI engines to other advanced combustion engines revealed their increased importance and prospective consequences. Furthermore, the challenges of transitioning from conventional to HCCI engines are examined, along with potential answers for future upgrade approaches and control tactics.</p> </abstract>

The Role of Participation in the Responsible Innovation Framework for Biofuels Projects: Can It Be Assessed?

The growth in biofuels’ investment brings with it concerns about the social and environmental impacts of the sector. Several tools and frameworks have been used to address these concerns, including the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework. This paper analyzes whether this framework can be applied in contexts where local culture and values shape differently the freedom of speech and engagement, such as in developing countries in which biofuel innovation projects are often implemented. A literature review focused on eight case studies of other authors was used to explore the role of “participation” as a structural element of the RRI framework and the impact of its absence where effective participation in the innovation development process is not possible. In conclusion, we highlight how this inspirational normative framework, designed to influence innovation, is misused to judge its impacts. More than that, the conclusions of such misused applications reflect more the difficulties involved in applying guidelines than the responsible character of the innovation, whose impacts are usually defined upfront materially and measurably.

Coordination and legitimacy in the Australian biofuels innovation system 1979 - 2017

Like many countries, since the 1980s, Australia has introduced a range of government policies to support the development of a biofuels industry. Despite growth in the use of biofuels over this period industry development has not progressed to the extent seen in many of these other countries. This paper uses the technological innovation systems perspective to guide an historical event analysis of the biofuels innovation system within Australia over a period of almost 40 years. Results suggest two main system dynamics have been present: a series of science and technology cycles that aimed to progress biofuel technologies toward commercial competitiveness with incumbent petroleum industries; and several short lived industry development cycles that were weakened by limited market formation mechanisms and insufficient socio-political legitimation. It is concluded that the introduction of biofuel quotas in the absence of sufficient industrialisation of biofuels, while promoting some growth, undermined their effectiveness. The results are discussed in terms of the need for policy layering to support effective system development.

Overcoming the Biological Contamination in Microalgae and Cyanobacteria Mass Cultivations for Photosynthetic Biofuel Production.

Microalgae and cyanobacteria have shown significant potential for the development of the next biofuels innovation because of their own characteristics as photosynthetic microorganisms. However, it is confronted with a lot of severe challenges on the economic scaling-up of the microalgae- and cyanobacteria-based biofuels production. One of these major challenges is the lack of a reliable preventing and controlling culture system of biological contamination, which can attack the cell growth or product accumulation causing crashing effects. To increase the commercial viability of microalgae- and cyanobacteria-based biofuels production, overcoming the biological contaminations should be at the top of the priority list. Here, we highlight the importance of two categories of biological contaminations and their controlling strategies in the mass cultivations of microalgae and cyanobacteria, and outline the directions that should be exploited in the future.

The impact of pilot and demonstration plants on innovation: The case of advanced biofuel patenting in the European Union

The objective of this paper is to investigate how pilot and demonstration plants affect innovation in the empirical context of advanced biofuel technology. Patent counts are used as a proxy for innovation; we employ data for eight EU Member States over the time-period 1980–2011, and negative binomial regression techniques. The focus is on plant investments that have received public co-funding. The results are overall robust to alternative model specifications, and show that the knowledge generated through past investments in pilot and demonstration plants has had positive effects on advanced biofuel patenting activities. This result is particularly valid for so-called experimental plants, i.e., aiming at testing the technical viability of new technology. The empirical analysis does not indicate the presence of any positive interaction between investments in experimental plants and biofuel blending policies, i.e., in the sense that more stringent blending requirements can raise the rate-of-return on additional pilot tests. Moreover, advanced biofuel innovation is also affected through knowledge spillovers across the selected EU Member States. The paper ends by outlining avenues for future research on the role of pilot and demonstration plants in technology development.

Multiculturality in the Indonesia's Biofuel Innovation Initiative: Critical issues of land use and sustainable environment

The Presidential decree was triggered national-scale energy plant cultivation to all districts. It is based on the assumption that Indonesia's energy security problem need to be addressed for accommodating poverty and environment problems. Until today the main objective of the program has not materialized, social conflicts that emerged mostly triggered by land usage and environment issues. While energy-economic calculation is central in the biofuel program conception, the evidences reveal a wide range of cultural issues taking a significant position in the program adoption at rural communities. In other words, multiculturality is a critical issue in the biofuel program adoption.

Following Jatropha from Bandung to Sumbawa: Entanglement between University and Industry in Practice

This article contributes to understanding innovation in an emerging economy by building on the STS concept of entanglement and collaboration. Specifically, it develops an analytical framework to capture the duality of innovation actors in creating novelties and in maintaining regularities of the existing economic and political contexts. Entanglement is characterized by the emergence of new associations that allow the actors to innovate, while collaboration is characterized by the presence of new activities to maintain the existing economic and political contexts. This article demonstrates that the transformation of Jatropha-based fuel from invention to commercial transaction was facilitated by a series of incremental collaborations, which lasted different amounts of time depending on the context. The article suggests that the local institutional context plays a crucial role in allowing actors to take autonomous actions to pursue biofuel innovation. However, when their strategy encounters an unfavorable socioeconomic environment due to political change at the national level, their ability to accomplish their economic goals through new innovation declines.

Tracking U.S. biofuel innovation through patents

We use biofuel patents as a proxy for biofuel innovation. Through use of natural language processing and machine-learning algorithms, we expand patent classification capabilities to better explain the history of biofuels innovation. Results indicate that after the initial establishment of the U.S. biofuel industry, there were two surges in biofuel innovation: 1995–2000, characterized by heavy patenting by 1st generation (food-based) biofuel firms; and 2005–2010, characterized by a second surge of innovation by those same large firms, complemented by a large number of biotechnology firms producing a relatively small number of 2nd generation biofuel patents. Our analysis corroborates the widespread understanding that the first surge in biofuel innovation was linked to innovations in agriculture, and that the second surge of biofuel innovation was driven by demand-pull policies mandating and incentivizing biofuels. But the slow emergence of a 2nd generation cellulose-based biofuels industry, far slower than called for by policy, suggests that technology-push policies more focused on R&D and investment may be needed to accelerate the commercialization of 2nd generation biofuels.

Limits to responsible innovation

ABSTRACTResponsible Innovation (RI) is a young field of research that has nevertheless had remarkable successes in dissemination within academic and political circles. However, there is relatively little awareness of its limits, blind spots and situations in which it cannot be used for actual innovation trajectories. Without such awareness, there is a risk that RI may get hollowed out and turned into a tool for ‘greenwashing’. To examine RI’s limits, we present a case study on biofuel innovation in Hassan, South India. This case study demonstrates that there are important barriers that may make it difficult to conduct innovation according to RI values. In particular, we highlight the following factors that emerge from our case study and need more attention in order to be included and adequately theorised in the RI literature: material barriers to innovation, engagement with abandoning or reducing existing practices as a consequence of innovation, power differences and dependencies, (un)clear demarcation of responsibilities, strategic behaviour and, lastly, different, diverging and even contradictory interests. We demonstrate that such factors may obstruct the possibility to innovate in a responsible way, leading us to our core observation that RI should be about innovating responsibly – or not innovating at all.

Fantasy, values, and identity in biofuel innovation: Examining the promise of Jatropha for Indonesia

This paper addresses how fantasies of Jatropha impact research and innovation and how actors’ values shape Indonesia's biofuel trajectory. The paper develops an analytical framework that combines the concepts of technological fantasies and normative values. In other words, this study utilizes dimensions of fantasies to elaborate how heterogeneous actors became embroiled in Jatropha innovation. At the same time, the study investigates the presence of various normative values, such as faith in technocracy and beliefs regarding developmentalism, that emerged in and through actors’ multifarious involvement with biofuel. The analysis indicates that Jatropha innovation in Indonesia was intricately shaped by beliefs cutting across governance and governmentality, alienation and marginalization. The paper places these observations within the wider context of science and technology studies and, more particularly, within the issue of fantasy and innovation practices in energy technology adoption, use, and policy.

Environmental Governance and Shifts in Canadian Biofuel Production and Innovation

Canada's adoption of international climate commitments, national emissions standards, and incentive programs drove expansion of biofuel production using available first-generation technologies in feedstock-rich regions. Market saturation and the emergence of second-generation technologies shifted government support away from first-generation technologies, placing pressure on regional production clusters. This article analyzes how Canadian biofuel firms restructured their value-chain activities in response to those technological and policy changes. The ability to access technologies and navigate multiscalar policy contexts shapes restructuring. Geographic patterns of cellulosic innovation are identified, and the role of firms and policy in regional industrial reorganization is discussed.

A functions approach to innovation system building in the South: the pre-Proálcool evolution of the sugarcane and biofuel sector in Brazil

This paper applies a technological innovation system (TIS) approach to study how and under which circumstances the sugarcane and biofuel innovation system (SUBIS) emerged and grew in Brazil in the period 1900–1973. The paper advances our understanding of innovation system (IS) building in the South in three ways. First, it illustrates how sectoral IS formation can be understood by using the TIS framework. Second, it highlights key mechanisms in the formation of TIS. Third, it illustrates that the TIS approach must further emphasize the demand for new knowledge in order to be adapted to the South. In addition, the paper demonstrates how many decades of IS building was central to the subsequent success of the Brazilian National Alcohol Program.

Governed by history: institutional analysis of a contested biofuel innovation system in Tanzania

Initially hailed as a miracle crop for biofuel production, Jatropha has recently attracted criticism for competing with food production, causing adverse biodiversity impacts, and jeopardizing land access by rural populations in tropical countries. This article analyzes the contested development of Jatropha biofuel sector in Tanzania by anchoring two new concepts of “organizational models” and “institutional arrangements” to the sectoral systems of innovation perspective. The notion of “organizational models” brings into relief the heterogeneity of actors in an innovation system and the ways in which the actors form networks, within and across national borders, to organize innovative activities. The concept of “institutional arrangements” refers to the ensemble of formal and informal institutions assembled during Tanzania’s colonial and postcolonial eras, which directly govern innovative activities in specific organizational models. Based on a location-specific and historically grounded institutional analysis within the innovation system framework, implications are drawn for the future development of Tanzania’s Jatropha sector including its links with European markets and for the regulation of “next-generation” biofuels.

Multicultural in Indonesia's Biofuel Innovation Initiative: Critical Issues of Land Use and Sustainable Environment

The Presidential decree was triggered national-scale energy plant cultivation to all districts. It is based on the assumption that Indonesia's energy security problem need to be addressed that accommodate poverty and environment problems. Until today, the main objective of the program has not materialized, social conflicts have been emerging mostly triggered by land use and environment issues. While energy-economic calculation is central in the biofuel program conception, the evidences reveal a wide range of cultural issues taking a significant position in the program adoption at rural communities. In other words, multicultural is a critical issue in the biofuel program adoption.

Eco-Innovation Systems and Problem Sequences: The Contrasting Cases of US and Brazilian Biofuels

This paper discusses the re-emergence of biofuel innovation systems in the USA and Brazil. We develop a view of eco-innovation systems as emerging and evolving to solve ecological problems. We then consider the role of the State as a core actor in the mobilization of innovation systems and discuss how specific institutional arrangements, political contexts and technological competencies influence how problems are framed. We argue that the way ecological problems are framed and articulated has a significant impact on the direction and momentum of system evolution. Finally, we draw attention to the dynamic and evolving characteristics of eco-innovation systems that result from recurrent re-specifications of the problem in focus, as partial solutions emerge and as the political and economic dimensions are reframed.

The evolution of the knowledge accumulation function in the formation of the Brazilian biofuels innovation system

The conceptual and empirical analysis of function dynamics in innovation systems has been mostly concentrated on the experiences of developed countries. Additional research is necessary to examine the formation of technological innovation systems, specially 'new-to-the-world' innovation systems in late industrialising contexts, specifically how the knowledge accumulation function evolves. This paper is concerned with those issues: the formation of a 'new-to-the-world' technological innovation system in a late industrialising context, namely the Brazilian biofuels innovation system. It focuses, in particular, on the evolution of the knowledge accumulation function in the formation of such innovation system from 1975 to the present.

Cumulative causation in the formation of a technological innovation system: The case of biofuels in the Netherlands

Despite its worldwide success, the innovation systems approach is often criticised for being theoretically underdeveloped. This paper aims to contribute to the conceptual and methodological basis of the (technological) innovation systems approach. We propose an alteration that improves the analysis of dynamics, especially with respect to emerging innovation systems. We do this by expanding on the technological innovation systems and system functions literature, and by employing the method of ‘event history analysis’. By mapping events, the interactions between system functions and their development over time can be analysed. Based on this it becomes possible to identify forms of positive feedback, i.e. cumulative causation. As an illustration of the approach, we assess the biofuels innovation system in The Netherlands as it evolved from 1990 to 2007.

Opening the Indonesian Bio-Fuel Box

This article employs the notion of translation introduced in ANT literature to study the current bio-fuel development in Indonesia. Despite the presence of some activities by scientists, businessmen, policy makers, and farmers, diffusion of bio-fuel innovation seems to remain very limited. The article aims at understanding the bio-fuel development trajectory by seeking to disclose a variety of elements that shape the trajectory. We also make use of the notion of ‘qualculation’, to further diagnose the trajectory. Bio-fuel translations generated by three different scientists are described in the article. We show that the translations follow specific patterns of qualculation, namely ‘proliferation’ and ‘rarefaction’. We use this to make sense of the current diffusion of bio-fuel innovation in Indonesia. Beside this contextual result, the article also seeks to contribute to ANT literature by exploring the concept of qualculation in the analysis of technological innovation.