Rethinking bioenergy from an agricultural perspective: Ethical issues raised by perennial energy crop and crop residue production for energy in the UK and Denmark Orla Shortall, MSc. Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2014 1 Abstract The aim of this project is to explore the social and ethical dimensions of the agricultural production of perennial energy crop and crop residues for energy. Biomass – any living or recently living matter – is being promoted in industrialised countries as part of the transition from fossil fuels to an economy based on renewable energy. Various challenges face the use of bioenergy however. One particularly controversial and high profile example has been the use of food crop biofuels in transport which are seen to conflict with food production and to cause significant environmental damage. Suggested ways around these controversies is the production of perennial energy crops such as grasses and trees and crop residues such as straw, which are seen to require fewer inputs and less prime land. Some have analysed the controversies raised by biofuels in terms of controversies around industrial agriculture more broadly: biofuels are perceived to be large scale, monocultural, environmentally damaging and pushed by agri-business and energy interests. This project asks what type of agriculture system perennial energy crops and crop residues are seen as developing within, if at all. This was considered worth exploring because the type of system will have a large bearing on how they are received in future. To this end a theoretical framework of different paradigms of agriculture ranging from industrial agriculture at one end to alternative agriculture at the other was developed and applied to the data. Interviews with key stakeholders and analysis of key documents in the UK and Denmark were carried out to address the question of how perennial energy crops and crop residues are seen as overcoming previous controversies raised by food crop biofuels, in terms of their place in agricultural systems. The thesis argues that stakeholder’s visions of perennial energy crops and crop residues can be understood in terms of four models of agriculture: two industrial and two alternative. These are called “industrialism lite” that involves producing perennial energy crops on marginal land; life sciences integrated agriculture including the biorefinery strategy; multifunctional perennial energy crop production on environmentally marginal land; and ecologically integrated multipurpose biomass production through agroforestry production. There is also an argument which cuts across the paradigms and maintains that regardless of the type of agricultural system used very little or no biomass should be produced for the energy sector because of the scale of resources it requires and the scale of society’s energy use. These positions can be summarised as three different ways to overcome challenges raised by food crop biofuels: further industrialise agriculture; de-industrialise agriculture; and de-industrialise agriculture and reduce society’s energy use, though biomass could still only be used to a very limited extent, if at all, in energy production. 2 List of published papers Shortall, O.K. (2014). Agricultural Sciences and Ethical Controversies of Biofuels in Thompson, P. (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Agriculture Ethics, Springer, Dordrecht. Shortall, O.K. (2013). “Marginal land” for energy crops: Exploring definitions and embedded assumptions. Energy Policy, 62, 19–27. Gamborg, C., Millar, K., Shortall, O., & Sandøe, P. (2012). Bioenergy and Land Use: Framing the Ethical Debate. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 25(6), 909–925. Shortall, O.K. and Millar, K. (2012) The ethics of using agricultural land to produce biomass: Using energy like it grows on trees in (eds.) Potthast, T. and Meisch, S. Climate change and sustainable development: Ethical perspectives on land use and food production Wageningen Academic Press, Tubingen. 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Kate Millar and Dr. Sujatha Raman at the University of Nottingham and Prof. Peter Sandøe and Dr. Christian Gamborg at the University of Copenhagen for being such helpful, engaged, insightful and encouraging supervisors. Receiving such a high level of feedback from them, as well as their kindness and pastoral support was a real help in the PhD process. I would also like to thank everyone working at the Institute of Science and Society (ISS) and Centre for Applied Bioethics for their support and for creating stimulating environments in which to conduct research. Thank you to Alison Mohr for her advice and guidance as internal assessor. I would like to thank everyone at the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen for their warm welcome and support. I am grateful to everyone at the Enabling and governing sustainable transitions to a low carbon society project in Denmark and the LACE project at the University of Nottingham for the opportunity to be part of multidisciplinary research projects and for exposure to a wide breadth of interesting research. I would like to thank the administrative team in the School of Biosciences at the University of Nottingham, especially Monica Mills, Sue Woodward, Kathy Lawson and Sheila Northover; the administrative team in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, especially Alison Haigh; and the administrative team at the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen, especially Sara Vincentzen Kondrup and Hanne Teilmann Møller for their invaluable help with the logistics of the PhD. I would like to thank Matthias Kaiser and everyone who attended the ASFPG workshops for their advice and inspiration. Thank you to Kathrine Hauge Madsen at Agrotech for providing background information on the Danish bioenergy sector. I would like to thank the interviewees for giving up their time to take part in the research. Thanks are also due to the numerous people at conferences who have given me valuable insights and encouragement. Thank you to all the current and former PhD students in the ISS office Aleksandra, Andrew Turner, Andy, Bev, Carlos, Eleanor, Eveline, Greg, Martin, Nate, Richard, Shashank, Shih-Hsin, Szczepan, Tanasi and Will. A special thanks to Rob for ensuring I wasn’t homeless and to Barbara for coming to Nottingham. Thank you to Annika and Florence for being my PhD buddies. Thank you to Hugh. Thank you to Claire Kinsella for the amazing food and Sarah Cantwell, whom I would nominate for beatification if she was into that sort of thing. Thank you to all my friends in the UK and Ireland and other places. Thank you to Emer, Patrick and Patrick Mc for being such excellent siblings and sibling in law. And most of all thank you to my parents. I don’t really know where to start, thank you! 4 Contents Chapter 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 8 1.1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 8 1.2 Biofuels controversies ........................................................................................................ 9 1.3 Research aims, questions and methods ............................................................................ 12 1.4 Thesis structure................................................................................................................ 16 Chapter 2 Background. .................................................................................................................... 19 2.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 19 2.2 Bioenergy background ........................................................................................................... 19 2.3 Biomass controversies ........................................................................................................... 26 2.4 Responses to the controversy ................................................................................................ 30 2.5 Responses to the responses to the controversies ................................................................... 37 2.6 Other analyses ....................................................................................................................... 39 2.6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 41 Chapter 3 Paradigms of agriculture.................................................................................................. 42 3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 42 3.2 Industrial agriculture .............................................................................................................. 44 3.3 Alternative agriculture ........................................................................................................... 50 3.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 56 Chapter 4 Methods.......................................................................................................................... 62 4.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................