EMBRACING OUR BIOECONOMIC FUTURE: ENGENDERING POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE ENERGY AND CHEMICAL SECTOR OF THE BIOECONOMY

摘要

The world is being faced with daunting challenges: food, energy, and water are growing more scarce, the climate is changing, and the cheap natural resources that changed the world are now responsible for a threat to life and environmental health. Alternatives to petroleum products and fossil fuels have existed for over a century, but they have always lacked political and economic sustainability. With growing concern and urgency, global communities are attempting to change their respective economies to sustainable alternatives. The bioeconomy is a vision for a future where biology can be leveraged to meet the needs of a growing population. There are veteran technologies, such as biofuels, and the burgeoning science of employing microbial life to produce carbon-sequestering fuels and chemicals from waste material. The potential of the bioeconomy is promising, especially for American industry. While the technology is maturing and building viability, it can be advantageous to exploit more profitable sectors of the bioeconomy to support it as a whole. Biofuels and biochemicals are interdependent- they share many of the same challenges and opportunities. Growing support for one can implicitly help the other, and building economic viability will create political sustainability. However, prominent policy debates present political challenges that, coupled with economic uncertainties, are increasingly difficult to navigate. Serious concern over existing policy, the current state of the automotive industry and fuel distribution system, capricious oil markets, immature bio-based technology, and competing environmental policy priorities all make the conversion to bio-based technologies difficult. In order to expedite the transition to a bioeconomy in a way that is politically and economically sustainable, there should be strategic prioritization of action and investment by federal agencies, and new policies need to be in place that encourage growth in capable technologies by leveraging the free market. Federal agencies should focus their efforts on bioproducts that can create biofuel profitability, investments that will be mutually beneficial to a variety of technologies in the bioeconomy, capitalizing on regional specializations, and developing consensus on prominent debates. New policy should reform the Renewable Fuel Standard and the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standard, and craft new policy that encourage market adoption of low-carbon biochemicals and bioproducts. Additionally, the potential of pricing carbon in an economically-minded way should also be taken into consideration.