Skip to content

Future Energy Seminar Series: 2 steps forward but 5 back in Swedish advanced biofuels

Held on the 28th Mar 2019

at 1pm to
2pm


Add to Calendar 2019-03-28 13:00:00 2019-03-28 14:00:00 Australia/Sydney Future Energy Seminar Series: 2 steps forward but 5 back in Swedish advanced biofuels

2 steps forward but 5 back in Swedish advanced biofuels - interplay between policy and technology commercialization

Despite lofty goals for carbon neutrality, oil independence in transport, and heavy investment in research, pilots, and demonstration projects for advanced biofuels, many projects were cancelled or ‘placed on hold’ over the past decade in Sweden.

Many industry actors placed much of the blame on policy-makers but this analysis presents how factors such as:
– improved project alignment with incumbent technical & institutional systems;
– stronger understanding of synergies and competitive issues between fuel platforms, and
– clearer understanding of (in)effectiveness of policy interventions and what policymakers can and cannot achieve,
may have helped avoid some of the pitfalls the Swedish bioenergy sector has experienced.

It is argued that these examples should be relevant for bioenergy proponents across a range of contexts.

For more information, see an English language report that underlies the seminar: Examining systemic constraints and drivers for production of forest-derived transport biofuels

About the Speaker:

Associate Professor Philip Peck of the IIIEE at Lund University, Sweden, has worked with aspects of technology system change in Europe since the late 1990s.

Since 2005, many of his projects have centred on bioenergy systems. While the Swedish bioenergy sector is built from a forestry base, it also intermeshes with agricultural and municipal waste systems at a very significant scale - thus presenting overlaps with parts of systems shared by many countries. In Sweden bioenergy now accounts for some 25% of the energy-carriers entering the national energy mix.

Philip is a 'born and bred' Tasmanian and an alumnus of UTAS.