Integrating Value Considerations in the Decision Making for the Design of Biorefineries

Biobased production has been promoted as a sustainable alternative to fossil resources. However, controversies over its impact on sustainability highlight societal concerns, value tensions and uncertainties that have not been taken into account during its development. In this work, the consideration of stakeholders’ values in a biorefinery...

Societal and Ethical Issues in Industrial Biotechnology

In this chapter we aim to give an overview of the main societal and ethical issues that are currently voiced around industrial biotechnology. We will illustrate this with some recent cases, such as the development of synthetic artemisinin, synthetic vanillin and vegetable oil produced by engineered algae. We show that current societal and...

Setting the design space of biorefineries through sustainability values, a practical approach

Sustainable development has become an outstanding aspiration in our society. However, the meaning of sustainability and how it should be operationalized is a complex issue that depends on subjective beliefs and values. To advance toward sustainable biobased production, we present an approach to delimit the design space of biorefineries by...