Levelling the playing field for EU biomass usage

The threats of climate change, food security, resource depletion and energy security are driving society towards a sustainable low-carbon future. Within this paradigm, biomass plays an invaluable role in meeting the food, feed, energy and material needs of future generations. Current EU thinking advocates biomass for high-value materials, which is not aligned with EU public policy support for ‘lower value’ bioenergy applications. ‘High-technology’ and ‘no bioenergy mandate’ pathways explore market conditions that generate a more equitable distribution between competing biomass conversion technologies and competing biomass and fossil technologies. In achieving greater equity, these pathways ease biomass market tensions; enhance EU food security; improve EU biobased trade balances; accelerate biomaterial sectors’ output performance and favour macroeconomic growth. Moreover, an additional 80% increase in the oil price signals a tipping point in favour of first generation biofuels, whilst simultaneously boosting output in advanced material conversion technologies even more than the high-technology pathway.     

Approximating the DGP of China's quarterly GDP

We demonstrate that the Data Generating Process (DGP) of China's cumulated quarterly Gross Domestic Product (GDP, current prices), as it is reported by the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBSC), can be (very closely) approximated by a simple rule. This rule says that the annual growth in any quarter is equal to the annual growth in its previous quarter plus an error term that is only nonzero in the first quarter of each year and with small variance. We show that this rule fits the data well for the period 1992Q1–2005Q4 for total GDP. It also gives accurate forecasts for 2006Q1–2009Q4.     

Household Waste Management in a Swedish Municipality: Determinants of Waste Disposal, Recycling and Composting

This paper analyzes waste disposal, recycling and composting in a municipality in southwest Sweden. In 1994, Varberg introduced a weight-based billing system for household waste charging 1 kr/kg of waste and at the same time recycling centers were set up and a green shopping campaign was launched. This led to a significant reduction in waste collected and increased recycling. This study had access to actual measured data on waste disposal at the household level for a residential area called Tvååker, in addition to survey data for the same households. This makes it possible to carry out a more reliable and more detailed analysis than has been previously possible, particularly with respect to attitudinal variables. The most important determinants of each individual household's waste were composting of kitchen waste, living area, age and attitudes concerning the difficulty of recycling various materials. Separate sections look at composting behaviour, at willingness to pay for sound waste management and for the sake of comparison three other municipalities are also studied. The main finding is that economic incentives, although important, are not the only driving force behind the observed reduction in municipal waste: Given the proper infrastructure that facilitates recycling, people are willing to invest more time than can be motivated purely by savings on their waste management bill.     

Determinants of stakeholders’ attitudes towards a new technology: nanotechnology applications for food,water, energy and medicine

Stakeholder risk and benefit perceptions and attitudes towards a technology matter for the societal response to these technologies. This is especially the case for technological innovations where the public has no direct experience with the technology and its applications. In such cases, expert views are the main source for public opinion formation. Stakeholder risk and benefit perception, and their effect on attitudes towards a new technology (nanotechnology) and its applications were examined in two studies. In a survey, the effect of risk and benefit perception on attitudes to nanotechnology in specific application domains (energy, water, food and medicine) was examined. While risk and benefit perception predicted much of the variance in attitude, experts were more positive about medicine applications and more negative about food applications than could be explained through risk and benefit perception. In the second study, expert focus groups were asked for reasons why food and medicine were seen as more negative and positive than based on the risk and benefit perceptions as measured in the survey. For medicine, the urgency and unique potential of nanotechnology was seen as a reason as why this domain was liked more. For food, the high level of uncertainty about risk assessment and about exposure of consumers and the lack of urgency in applying nanotechnology to food was seen as a reason this domain was liked less. In addition, experts voiced concern about potential negative public response to food applications as reasons for their negative attitude. These results thus suggest that both risk and benefit perception consist of multiple dimensions that require further exploration.