Responsible innovation: an approach for extracting public values concerning advanced biofuels

Abstract

The objective of our study was to test an approach for extracting public values concerning a virtually unknown and scientifically complex topic, namely advanced lignocellulosic biofuels, in order to foster responsible innovation of this novel technology in Canada as early on in the policy-making process as possible. As advanced lignocellulosic biofuels are currently an emerging form of liquid fuel for transport, it may be beneficial to open the development of this technology to “upstream” public input. We thereby explore how a deliberative mini-public views the need for advanced lignocellulosic biofuels and their recommendations for supporting or opposing its development and production. Participants of the study engaged in four days of deliberation on their value-based considerations concerning the social acceptability of this technology. On the final day, they developed a series of collective recommendations on three participant-generated agenda items: economic sustainability, unknown environmental and health impacts, and governance issues related to responsibility for advanced biofuels policy. The results provide a novel input into interdisciplinary research aimed at better understanding what may be driving public values on wider, sometimes controversial, issues related to biofuels.

Keywords:

• advanced biofuels
• deliberation
• public values
• policy input
• public engagement

1. Introduction

Taebi et al. (2014) argue that an ideal approach to responsible innovation (RI) must involve interdisciplinary research that can account for ethical issues and public values. The authors suggest that public debate is an “empirical source for extracting public values”, but identifying and facilitating trade-offs and determining whose opinions should count during these efforts continue to be key challenges for organizers (Taebi et al. 2014). The term “values” in this literature is used formally to include a set of concepts or beliefs ordered by comparative importance that guides behavior or events toward desirable end states (Dietz 2013, 14081). The need for broader RI frameworks that are responsive to public values and societal needs (Owen et al. 2013; Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013) is a current debate in the RI literature (van Oudheusden 2014), one often linked to arguments over how such frameworks are developed so as to recognize value conflicts, better assess fluid public values, and more deeply explore the possibility of re-designing technological systems in response to public input.

While Taebi et al. (2014) argue for the potential of public debate as a source of RI data, van Oudheusden (2014) has critiqued RI frameworks for various shortcomings related to deliberative public engagement on the grounds that these efforts do not problematize their own processes and fail to address the politics “in and of RI”. The objective of our study was to test an approach for extracting public values concerning a virtually unknown, scientifically and politically contentious topic, namely advanced lignocellulosic biofuels, in order to foster the RI of this novel technology in Canada as early on in the policy-making process as possible. The approach we take both invites and incorporates dissention from participants and external expert presenters alike. Participants are free to reject processes, agendas, and even the deliberative topic posed by the research team. In what follows, we argue that the deliberative outputs presented in this paper are the politically legitimate representations of the collective voice of participants concerning this topic (O'Doherty and Burgess 2009).

Advanced lignocellulosic biofuels are liquid biofuels for transport that are made using lignocellulose – a non-food feedstock (e.g. switchgrass) composed of plant cell walls – as opposed to food-based material (Lee 2013). Many social impacts swirl around advanced biofuels (Ribeiro 2013), but there is currently only a vague understanding of public values related to the successful commercialization of these new technologies. This gap in our understanding is important to both RI in this area and the fact that it is widely recognized that social acceptance will impact the ability of governments to achieve policy targets concerning renewable energies (see Wüstenhagen, Wolsink, and Bürer 2007 for a good discussion of social acceptance; and more recently the review by Cohen, Reichl, and Schmidthaler 2014).

In our study, extracting public values was accomplished through a deliberative mini-public event that focused on the need for advanced lignocellulosic biofuels in Canada. Participants engaged in four days of deliberation on their value-based considerations concerning the social acceptability of this technology, ultimately producing a series of policy-relevant recommendations for supporting or opposing its development. Five key factors identified in the literature and by experts in this field supported the need for this public deliberation: (1) energy, fossil fuel usage, and greenhouse gas emissions are key issues of our time (Dangerman and Schellnhuber 2013); (2) governments worldwide are seeking sustainable energy sources such as biofuels (Sorda, Banse, and Kemfert 2010); (3) the production of some first-generation biofuels like grain ethanol is not a sustainable practice (Naik et al. 2010); (4) a new phase of biofuel production is emerging with a focus on advanced-generation biofuels (Mohr and Raman 2013); and (5) controversies over the social impacts of biofuels remain unresolved (Ribeiro 2013) and highlight the lack of broad public dialogue over the social acceptance of advanced biofuels.

Very few studies have been published on the topic of public deliberation and advanced lignocellulosic biofuels (for another example see Entradas 2014). This paper thereby provides an important baseline on public values on these issues. The participants came to the deliberation with little knowledge of biofuels, but were informed through a variety of methods as we discuss below. On the final day, they developed a series of collective recommendations that could form one guiding input into the RI of this novel technology in Canada. We begin this paper by providing some brief context for the study, followed by the theoretical framework used and the methods employed. The results of the deliberation are presented as four main findings: (a) the value-based issues identified as important to participants; (b) how these issues were used to set a participant-generated agenda; (c) participant opposition to advanced biofuels expressed as persistent disagreements; and (d) the final policy recommendations, which included persistent disagreements as well as areas of consensus. We end by discussing the implications of the results for advanced biofuel policy.

2. Research context

Biofuels have been and remain a politically and scientifically controversial topic. This is exemplified by past experiences with first-generation biofuels, in which comprehensive reviews outline a variety of economic, environmental, ethical, and policy implications of their production (Naik et al. 2010; Nigam and Singh 2011). Various studies have also questioned the sustainability of some biofuels (e.g. Searchinger et al. 2008; IPCC 2011; Lynd et al. 2011; Upham, Tomei, and Dendler 2011; Wicke et al. 2012; FAO 2013) with the nature of these challenges varying depending on the feedstock used (Efroymson et al. 2013). Thus, while first-generation biofuel production has contributed to the diversification of energy sources away from finite resources such as oil and natural gas, many argue that the social impacts of first-generation liquid biofuels produced from food crops necessitate that alternatives be found (Ribeiro 2013).

Many countries are seeking to sidestep concerns over first-generation biofuels by focusing on advanced, sometimes termed second-generation, biofuels (Lee 2013). This phase can be linked to the evolution of novel feedstocks and conversion processes, with a focus on organic waste-based feedstocks and the application of genomic-based techniques (Rubin 2008). One example is the use of lignocellulosic biomass (fibrous, woody, and generally inedible portions of plants), which can be decomposed into the 5- and 6-carbon sugars required to produce bioethanol (Mabee and Saddler 2010). However, advanced lignocellulosic biofuels have yet to be extensively proven as economically and environmentally viable in large-scale production (Mohr and Raman 2013). Various parties also oppose these liquid biofuels for transport, instead promoting alternative forms of bioenergy (e.g. thermochemical conversion for heat and power). Thus, as Greene (2011) argues, two of the most significant challenges faced by the biofuel industry are the technical challenges associated with the production of advanced biofuel and the economic/policy challenges associated with the public acceptance of advanced biofuels as a viable source of alternative energy. These two challenges underscore the fact that advanced biofuels are a good example with which to explore how to extract and integrate public values into the RI of this novel technology.

Little is known about the public's values concerning of advanced biofuels. What is postulated is drawn from limited studies of first-generation biofuels (McCormick 2010; Rohracher 2010; van de Velde et al. 2011; Cacciatore, Scheufele, and Shaw 2012) and suggests public responses to advanced biofuels may be driven by a desire for more socially and environmentally responsible products (Phalan 2009), fuel reliability (Zapata and Nieuwenhuis 2009), the influence of the media (Wright and Reid 2011), and nationality (Savvanidou, Zervas, and Tsagarakis 2010). These past studies raise future-oriented questions such as: Will the issues of first-generation biofuels become conflated with advanced lignocellulosic biofuels in terms of public understanding? Will the mistakes of first-generation biofuel production be repeated with advanced lignocellulosic biofuels? How should trade-offs between potential damages to the environment and various utilities to society be managed?

Such questions reveal a tension between individual and societal interests regarding how best to govern advanced biofuel development. This suggests that policy-making efforts surrounding the future of advanced lignocellulosic biofuels should consider public values and the social acceptability of key value-laden trade-offs. As Ribeiro (2013) argues, “policy makers need to internalise the social dimension of ethanol in decision-making to prevent public opposition and irreversible social costs in the future”. These social dimensions include effects such as farmers’ dependence on petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides for feedstock production, land tenure conflicts, the potential for social exclusion, health and safety issues due to pollution, and effects on food security (Ribeiro 2013). As such, social acceptance of trade-offs among these impacts may emerge as a significant barrier to advanced biofuel adoption and requires research attention (Chin et al. 2014). Such research can reorient the development of RI frameworks to be responsive to public values (Taebi et al. 2014), thereby creating an important convergence point between the RI literature and social acceptance literature related to biofuels. We have broached this opportunity by studying how people from diverse backgrounds collectively deliberate on what constitutes a socially acceptable approach to advanced lignocellulosic biofuel development and production, and how they cope with difficult value-laden trade-offs during these discussions.

3. Theoretical framework

The need to involve lay publics in science policy and decision-making as a way to democratize this process has been addressed in a significant amount of literature (Blacksher et al. 2012; Einsiedel and O'Doherty 2012; Stilgoe, Lock, and Wilsdon 2014). The interest here is not to support the criticized “deficit model” of public understanding of science (Wynne 1993), but to enable arm's length engagement and promote early, “upstream” input of public values (Stirling 2008). While a diversity of processes exist to promote public engagement (Rowe and Frewer 2005), public deliberation has emerged as one way to address shortcomings in informed public involvement in science and technology governance (Einsiedel and O'Doherty 2012).

Public deliberation differs from other forms of engagement (such as opinion polling) that risk collecting “top of the head” responses or creating phantom opinions from uniformed or misinformed citizens. Instead, public deliberation seeks in-depth discussions between diverse participants, and as explained by Chambers (2003), is “ … aimed at producing reasonable, well-informed opinions in which participants are willing to revise preferences in light of discussion, new information, and claims made by fellow participants” (309). Essentially, the notion is that certain issues which are contentious, politicized, or in need of input from a wide range of perspectives will benefit from opening the topic to public deliberation, followed by seeking to include the outcomes of this process in policy development (Dryzek 1994; Fishkin and Laslett 2003; Gastil 2008). Importantly, “upstream” public input is likely most beneficial before a technology or contentious issue has fully developed as part of an RI process, as once it is embedded in institutional practice or public life, it will be difficult for public values to be acted upon.

Public deliberations seek strong public participation by fostering a reflective environment. These deliberations are conceptualized as a unique form of public discussion that is: (a) informed, (b) highlights important value-based considerations and exposes significant trade-offs, and (c) seeks collective solutions to challenging social problems while also documenting persistent disagreements (Blacksher et al. 2012; Burgess 2014). This study sought to encourage such deliberation through recruiting for diverse backgrounds, informing participants without stakeholder capture, engaging and motivating participant toward critical reflection, and providing collective tasks that avoid premature consensus and document disagreements.

4. Methodology

The 2012 “Advanced Biofuels” in-person deliberative event took place over two non-consecutive weekends in Montréal, Québec, Canada. The deliberation focused on advanced lignocellulosic biofuels (Lee 2013).¹ The deliberation included significant learning sessions, small and large group deliberations, and a pre–post-test online survey to anchor the qualitative portions of the event (Figure 1 and for a complete review of the pre- and post-test survey results please see Longstaff et al. 2015). This method of public engagement has been repeated 12 times on various science policy issues (Burgess 2014). Below we briefly report the methods specific to this study (additional information can be found in Longstaff and Secko Forthcoming).

Figure 1. Structured deliberative process. The event involved a four-step process that provided information, enabled participants to self-identify key issues and to set their own agenda, and to develop recommendations for policy-makers to consider.

4.1. Participant sample

The event assembled a mini-public (Goodin and Dryzek 2006) involving a random, stratified sample of people from the Montréal area. Mini-publics are widely used in deliberative events to assemble a sample of lay citizens that represent a range of diverse views and interests, while being small enough to be logistically and financially feasible and allow for meaningful engagement between participants (Longstaff and Burgess 2010). Participants represented a range of demographic filters, which served as proxies for diversity of life experience including a mix of different educational backgrounds, ages, genders, and religious and cultural backgrounds, among other things (Table 1). Participants had to have strong English speaking and readings skills, have access to the Internet, and could not be members of environmental organizations, involved in scientific research, or affiliated with the energy sector. In other words, we were seeking to assemble a mini-public comprising citizens who did not have a vested or special interest in biofuel production. The final sample included 26 individuals and all participants, with one exception,² completed the entire event.

Table 1. Participant sample demographics.

Gender (n = 26)	Female	46%
Educational background (n = 26)	University certificate diploma or degree	46%
	College CEGEP or other non-University certificate	19%
	High school certificate or equivalent	19%
	Apprenticeship trades certificate or diploma	15%
Age (n = 26)	18–24	15%
	25–39	19%
	40–59	42%
	60 or older	23%
Religious background (n = 26)	No reported religious affiliation	27%
	Catholic	23%
	Protestant	15%
	Jewish	12%
	Christian Orthodox and Christian	12%
	Muslim, Sikh, and other unidentified religion	12%
Self-identified as a visible minority (n = 26)	Not a visible minority	77%
	Self-identified visible minority including Chinese (n = 2), Black (n = 2), and other non-identified (n = 2)	23%
Marital status (n = 23)	Common law relationship	9%
	Married	52%
	Separated	4%
	Divorced	4%
	Widowed	0%
	Single	30%
Children (n = 23)	No	35%
	Yes (with 2 children as the average response)	65%
Income level (n = 21)	Under $20,000	14%
	$21,000–$30,000	0%
	$31,000–$40,000	29%
	$41,000–$50,000	10%
	$51,000–$60,000	5%
	$61,000-$70,000	14%
	$71,000-$80,000	5%
	$81,000-$90,000	0%
	$91,000–$100,000	5%
	Over $100,000	19%
News media consumption (n = 25)	Less than once a month	4%
	About once a month	0%
	A couple of times a month	8%
	Several times a week	12%
	Daily	76%

Note: Totals may not equal 100% due to rounding.

4.2. Information materials

While this study rejects the “deficit model” of public understanding of science (Wynne 1993), we believe that providing participants with accessible, transparent information about the topic of interest is an important prerequisite for deliberation (MacLean and Burgess 2010). The deliberation began with an information phase (Phase 1) in which participants heard expert presentations on topics such as the science behind biofuel production, feedstock management, costs and economic viability, biofuel by-products, and the social implications of biofuel development, followed by a question and answer period with each speaker. Speakers only interacted with the group during their presentation and did not participate in deliberations in order to avoid mixing lay and expert voices, which has been shown to marginalize the views of non-experts (MacLean and Burgess 2010). Participants also received an information booklet to review after they completed the pre-event survey a few weeks before the deliberation to introduce them to the various issues (both positive and negative) associated with advanced biofuel development.³ The booklet was based on an extensive literature review and feedback from relevant experts who hold divergent points of view in order to present the widest possible range of opinion to participants. The success of the booklet to act as a primer and to communicate the best available evidence to participants compared to other information sources was analyzed as part of the assessment conducted for this event (Longstaff and Secko Forthcoming). In addition, participants completed a hands-on experiment designed to immerse them in the science and social issues related to biofuels and were invited to drop questions into a basket anonymously throughout the first weekend, which would be answered by a relevant expert the following weekend.

4.3. Stages of the deliberation

The event was divided into four stages: (1) informing, (2) issue identification, (3) participant-generated agenda setting, and (4) policy recommendations (Table 2). In total, one day was geared toward informing and orienting participants to the topic, while three days focused on deliberations among participants.

Table 2. Stages of the four-day event.

Stage	Activities
1. Informing (Day 1)	Introductions and goals Expert presentations and question period^a Biofuel experiment at the lab
2. Issue identification (Days 1 and 2)	Small group deliberation 1: Need for advanced biofuels Small group deliberation 2: Technology for advanced biofuel production Small group deliberation 3: Biofuels and consumers
3. Agenda Setting (Day 2)	Small group deliberation 4: Most important topics Plenary session (full group): Choice of most important topics (agenda setting)
4. Recommendations (Days 3 and 4)	Session A: Economic Sustainability, Costs and Prices Small group deliberation Plenary session (full group)
	Session B: Environment, Health, and Human Rights Small group deliberation Plenary session (full group)
	Session C: Government, Public, and Private Interests Small group deliberation Plenary session (full group)
	Session D: Exploring Alternatives Plenary session (full group)
	Final Sessions: Recommendations Group recommendations, ratification and outstanding issues (full group)

^aTwo expert presentations also occurred on the morning of Day 3.

In contrast to structured debate, successful deliberation requires that participants attempt to work toward collective resolutions to problems and explore a full range of views and values that they believe are relevant to the topic at hand. To accomplish this goal, it is important for organizers not to impose their own views on participants or inadvertently frame their discussions. This challenge was addressed by framing the initial task for participants very broadly and allowing participants to reject or suggest topics or processes in addition to setting their own agenda for the second and final weekend for the deliberation. After stage 1, participants were split into three small groups (two with 8 members, one with 10).⁴ They first worked to identify issues associated with advanced lignocellulosic biofuel production (Stage 2, Table 2). These small group discussions were guided by case studies, which were merely introduced as a discussion tool aimed at highlighting important issues in the biofuel literature such as whether there is a need for advanced biofuels in Canada; the technology that may facilitate a transition from first-generation biofuels to advanced biofuels; and the relationship between biofuels and its consumers. Participants were free to discuss any issue they deemed relevant. This stage was facilitated by a moderator who invited participants to identify issues as stakeholders, benefits, or concerns, and then posting issues on the wall. At the end of each session, three sets of notes appeared on the wall to map the ideas brought up by the small group and their level of occurrence.

Stage 3 gave participants an opportunity to select the issues from Stage 2 they wished to discuss in-depth in the large group setting. This was important to the framing of the event, as it allowed participants to independently self-select the topics for Stage 4. This agenda setting began in small groups (small group deliberation 4, Table 2) by asking participants two questions:

• Q1 – Does Canada have a need for advanced lignocellulosic biofuels?

• Q2 – If so, what considerations should go into its development? If not, why not?

Participants voted on question 1, followed by deliberating on question 2. The voting process was intended to symbolically capture the range of agreement in the room and also acknowledge persistent disagreements. The results of the vote were used to initiate deliberations on question 2, with the aim of selecting the three most important considerations for the development of advanced lignocellulosic biofuels in Canada or the three most important reasons why Canada should not pursue advanced lignocellulosic biofuels. At the end of this small group session, participants brought their considerations to a plenary, large group, session (agenda setting, Table 2), where the group agreed on the topics and processes that would guide the rest of the deliberation.

Stage 4 was the final phase of the event. It provided the opportunity for participants to develop a series of collective recommendations for policy-makers that included documented persistent disagreements. This stage was structured to address each issue selected during stage 3. Each issue was deliberated on individually, first in small groups (Group Deliberation sessions A, B, and C in Table 2) and then in a large group plenary session (Plenary sessions A, B, and C). When persistent disagreements emerged, consensus was not forced; instead participants were asked to explore their differences and, if they could not be resolved, to document them clearly in the deliberative outputs. Recommendations that emerged from Stage 4 were ratified by participants at the end of Day 4.

4.4. Data analysis

All deliberations were audio recorded and transcribed.⁵ A professional moderator facilitated the large group discussions, while three members of the research team facilitated the small group discussions. Notetakers were also present in each room for the small group and large group sessions. Overall analysis of all sessions followed the qualitative knowledge organization model of Given and Olson (2003), as well as an abridged grounded theory approach (Strauss and Corbin 1990). It has been argued that deliberative public engagements on complex issues can be seen to have two distinct kinds of output: (1) analytical outputs, which involve analysis of data from the event by the researcher according to areas of interest and (2) deliberative outputs, which are politically legitimate representations of the collective voice of participants (O'Doherty and Burgess 2009). In this paper, we focus on the deliberative outputs of the event. The results described in the next section thereby attempt to move beyond simple aggregation of individual opinions (e.g. measuring public opinion) to informed group decisions about collective values. These outputs take the form of a qualitative summary of the collective statements of participants as related to Stages 2, 3, and 4 of the event (Table 2). The results purposefully do not contain individual quotes, as this would not satisfy the criteria of representing ratified group opinions and values.

5. Results

5.1. Issues identified as important to participants

The first step we take when trying to extract public values concerning a topic is to encourage participants to think through the range of interests pertinent to that topic by identifying relevant stakeholders and the various benefits and concerns members of the public may have for the RI of (in this case) advanced lignocellulosic biofuel policy in Canada. Participants are not asked to answer expert-oriented technical questions about RI, but instead tasked with exploring value-based considerations and trade-offs concerning the social acceptability of this technology. The group was free to explore any topic they deemed necessary and able to say “no” to future production.

Following this method, participants were asked to categorize stakeholders,⁶ benefits, and concerns related to advanced lignocellulosic biofuel development in Canada during the first weekend of the event. Participants identified 38 stakeholders. Most stakeholders were mentioned by several participants in more than one discussion session during the issue identification phase (Stage 2). The main stakeholders identified by participants were:

• Consumers (mentioned 22 times).

• Government (20).

• Transportation industry (13).

• Environment (11).

• Farmers (10).

When referring to consumers, for example, participants alluded to members of the general public who are affected by higher prices of cars, fuel, and food, and who are unaware of biofuel research but may be willing to consume biofuels. Participants often referred to the federal government and its role in regulating the biofuel industry, allocating resources, and overseeing research. The transportation industry was mentioned in terms of public transportation, commercial aviation, and trucks, while the environment was seen as a stakeholder due to the potential environmental impact of advanced biofuel production. Farmers were seen as stakeholders because of the potential impacts of growing feedstocks for advanced biofuel production.

Participants also identified 51 benefits. The most frequently mentioned benefits were:

• Job creation (mentioned 28 times).

• Cleaner environment (28).

• Lower gas prices (14).

• New investments and new local businesses (9).

• Possibility to choose other fuels at the service station (7).

When discussing job creation, participants mentioned that producing advanced biofuels would likely generate new jobs in agriculture, research, and production facilities. When they mentioned a cleaner environment, they wanted reduction in pollution from advanced biofuels as compared to fossil fuels. Other benefits mentioned less than seven times were “more biofuel research possibilities”, “more food availability”, “regulated standards” of biofuel production, “technological advances in general and in the automotive industry”, and “energy security/less energy dependence on other countries”.

Finally, 71 concerns were identified. The most frequently mentioned concerns were:

• Cost of development and production (mentioned 12 times).

• Use of land (12).

• Impact on the environment (11).

• Transparency in voluntary, third-party certification (10).

• Health and safety problems (8).

The level of occurrence – how often participants believed their issue was already mentioned in a discussion – was much lower for concerns. The most popular dealt with negative impacts on consumer costs, land use, and the environment. Other concerns raised by participants less than eight times included lack of “education and public awareness”, “pollution”, “noise”, and “traffic” generated by new biofuel production plants, “cost of vehicle modifications”, and “exploitation of Third World resources” for biofuel production.

5.2. The most important agenda items to participants

The second task of the event was setting the agenda for further deliberations. Asking participants to generate their own agenda allows them to critically evaluate or reject the processes we propose and modify them in ways that they find meaningful and productive. As part of this process, participants were first asked to vote on the deliberative topic imposed on them by the research team: does Canada have a need for advanced lignocellulosic biofuels? Participants voted in their small groups and facilitators counted the votes. This vote symbolically captured the range of agreement in the room and also acknowledged disagreements.⁷ The result was 21 in favor, 5 against. After voting, and due to the majority being in favor, participants identified and discussed key issues from their previous deliberations that ought to be considered if advanced lignocellulosic biofuels were to be developed in Canada. Nine distinct issues were identified as shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Key participant issues related to the future of advance lignocellulosic biofuels.

Consideration	Description
1. The environment	What impact will advanced lignocellulosic biofuels development have on pollution of land, water, and air? Is advanced lignocellulosic biofuel production and consumption better than that of other alternatives for the environment?
2. Human health	What impact will advanced lignocellulosic biofuel development have on human health?
3. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs)	How do GMO issues related to food production and consumption apply to that of advanced lignocellulosic biofuels?
4. Exploitation of developing world resources	What might be some of the consequences of advanced lignocellulosic biofuels production moving to developing countries with potentially less regulation and lower production costs?
5. Government role and oversight	How much responsibility should the Canadian government have over advanced lignocellulosic biofuels? How should the government weigh public and private interests in advanced lignocellulosic biofuels?
6. Public awareness	How can the Canadian public become more informed, and take a more active role in advanced lignocellulosic biofuels? How can the Canadian public best communicate their hopes, concerns, and interests to the government?
7. Costs and prices	How will increased advanced lignocellulosic biofuels production and consumption impact costs and prices for producers, industry, and consumers?
8. Sustainability	How viable and sustainable will advanced lignocellulosic biofuels be over the short and long terms?
9. Exploring alternatives to advanced lignocellulosic biofuels	Are there alternatives to advanced lignocellulosic biofuels that achieve the same goals? Should we continue to use what we already have, while looking for better solutions?

The nine issues were brought to a large group session for deliberation. After discussing these issues at length, participants agreed – through a voting process – to condense them into three topics that would set the agenda for the second weekend: (1) Economic Sustainability, Costs and Prices; (2) Environment, Health and Human Rights; and (3) Balancing Government, Public, and Private Interests and Responsibilities. Participants also suggested adding a fourth session so that the views of opponents could be expressed and deliberated on: Exploring alternatives to advanced lignocellulosic biofuel. These results show that the diverse individual benefits and concerns of participants, when deliberated on as a collective, were prioritized in terms of economic impacts, environmental and human rights impacts, who holds the responsibility for these impacts, and better understanding group opposition (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Participant selection of key considerations and agenda items. Participants drew on their benefits and concerns to identify nine key considerations related to the future of advanced lignocellulosic biofuels. They prioritized these considerations into four agenda items for deliberation.

5.3. Opposition to advanced biofuel development

When asked if Canada has a need for advanced lignocellulosic biofuels five participants (19%) voted no. Participants believed it was very important to understand and capture the dissenting views of their fellow deliberants and therefore decided as a full group to add a session dedicated to this opposition on the final day of the event (Table 2, Session D). This session was held before the development of final recommendations to ensure opposing views were considered in any group outputs (including final policy recommendations) and persistent disagreements were documented.

The reasons participants mentioned for voting against advanced biofuels were:

1. The availability of other fuel and energy sources.

   Participants in opposition argued that we should use the fuel and energy sources we already have (e.g. fossil fuels, first-generation biofuel, natural gas, and solar) in a more responsible and sustainable way.

2. Is the investment worth it?

   Participants questioned if it is worth investing in advanced biofuels over other types of alternative energy.

3. Unknown impacts and the use of genetically modified (GM) energy crops.

   Three participants made reference to the unknown impacts that producing advanced lignocellulosic biofuels may have on the environment and on human health. They specifically mentioned the potential for land-use changes, the use of GM feedstocks, and the unknown impact on air and water quality.

4. Consumer impacts.

   One participant was in opposition due to the perceived lack of information on how consumers will be impacted by advanced biofuels.

5. Lack of public awareness

   One participant was in opposition due to the perceived lack of public awareness of advanced biofuels in Canada. They wondered if investments were worth the risk when Canadians had yet to publicly consider them.

6. Are advanced lignocellulosic biofuels a significant improvement?

   The sustainability of the advanced lignocellulosic biofuel industry was also an issue with some participants questioning why we should pursue them if they had not been proven to be a significant improvement over first-generation biofuels.

Participants deliberated on these reasons for opposing advanced biofuel development. They discussed the strengths and weaknesses of biofuels versus gasoline, and advanced biofuels versus first-generation biofuels. There was strong disagreement over whether liquid fuels should be promoted over large-scale adoption of electric vehicles for light vehicle transportation. Participants were not asked to answer expert-oriented technical questions, but tasked instead with exploring value-based considerations and trade-offs concerning the social acceptability of this technology. With this in mind, participants discussed the importance of the costs of new technologies for consumers, including both direct consumer costs and government spending from consumer-derived taxes. Lastly, it became clear that opponents were concerned with advanced biofuels being controlled by oil companies.

Participants both in favor and opposed to advanced biofuels could agree however that many of the above issues were divergent due to participants positioning themselves as either optimistic or pessimistic with regard to energy sources, energy consumption, and the long-term effects on the environment. This convergence in optimism versus pessimism led participants to negotiate a trade-off highlighting two key issues:

• Any policy recommendations must foreground the costs of new technologies for consumers.

• Any policy recommendations must foreground an articulation and public discussion of whether advanced biofuels were the best available option at present.

5.4. Deliberative recommendations

One goal of the final two days of deliberation (Table 2) was to move discussions beyond simply stating personal views, and to arrive at collective decisions for meaningful policy input, requiring the negotiation of additional value trade-offs. There was, in principle, high group support for the future development of advanced lignocellulosic biofuels in Canada (81% of participants; see above), but all participants expressed that this was not unequivocal. In the final session, after over 18 hours of deliberation, participants proposed a set of 13 multi-component recommendations with policy-makers in mind.

In brief, the key recommendations asked policy-makers to consider:

• How to balance the perceived need for advanced lignocellulosic biofuel with the transparent communication of its full monetary and environmental costs, while embedding its development with value considerations that aim to reduce overall fuel consumption (Recommendation A).

• Seeking policy options to ensure that any negative impacts of advanced lignocellulosic biofuel development would not exceed the impacts of fossil fuel usage, with specific sensitivity to articulating to the public what we do and do not know about environmental, health, and human rights impacts (Recommendation B).

• The development of a long-term strategy that seeks public inclusion and consumer choice (Recommendation C).

Value-laden trade-offs that emerged during deliberations (e.g. see Section 5.3) were embedded throughout these final recommendations as were many persisting disagreements (see supplemental material, section A, for the full recommendations). For example, the agreed upon text that comprises Recommendation B illustrates that participants generally supported the development of the biofuels industry, despite important concerns they also shared regarding the environment and human rights. However, they also insisted that their support for these agreed upon trade-offs was contingent on the industry being appropriately managed and regulated by the government, among other things. Similarly, persisting disagreements that related to alternative transportation strategies were captured in point 3B of Recommendation A. In all cases, participants worked collectively on the wording of recommendations.

Participants ratified their proposed recommendations by voting⁸ on each point in order to assess collective agreement. The recommendation and ratification process for this approach includes capturing both the reasons justifying various positions, as well as any persisting disagreements so the perspectives of all participants including those who oppose biofuels are captured in the final set of deliberative products. In this event, for majority of points, no fewer than 88% (22 out of 25) voted in favor of each of the final recommendations (see supplemental material, section B, for full voting results). The exceptions were: (i) Point 3 in recommendation A, where 16 participants voted in favor and 8 participants voted against (with 1 abstention) due to persistent disagreement over the use of the term “investing”; and (ii) Point 5 in recommendation C, where 14 participants voted in favor and 10 participants voted against (with 1 abstention) due to persistent disagreement over investing in a crown corporation versus using private partnerships. In all cases, consensus was not required and important persistent disagreements were explored by participants and clearly documented before voting took place. The second and third points under Recommendation B were ratified by all participants; an important result when viewed against 19% of the participants being in opposition to future development of advanced biofuels.

6. Discussion

The presented results represent some of the first data to emerge from informed deliberations with lay citizens about public values that ought to guide the RI of advanced lignocellulosic biofuels. Worldwide the importance of understanding public perspectives related to emerging biofuel technologies is now widely acknowledged (FAO 2013; Ribeiro 2013). Such understanding is aimed at (i) clarifying public values and (ii) unraveling the drivers of social acceptance of technological changes that may come with new generations of biofuels. In this context, understanding societal perspectives is one criterion for enabling the social sustainability of biofuels.

Before discussing some implications of the results for social acceptance, it is important to consider the notion of value and its role in the presented approach. As noted, Dietz (2013) generally discusses values as a set of concepts or beliefs ordered by comparative importance that guide people to desirable end states (14081). Drawing on a value-sensitive design approach, Taebi et al. (2014) argue that such public values should be actively incorporated into the RI design process since “innovations should primarily serve societal needs” (118). Taebi et al. (2014), however, acknowledge several challenges to this approach. One key challenge of particular relevance to this paper is how difficult it can be, in practice, to identify and extract public values. Through a structured deliberative approach (Figure 1) that is open to both collective participant outputs (supplemental data) and analytical outputs (Longstaff and Secko Forthcoming), we propose one self-reflective method for how participants can be tasked with deliberating on, and importantly self-extracting, their value-based considerations about a novel technology.

This approach is significant in view of current critiques of RI frameworks as politically weak (van Oudheusden 2014), as it seeks value-based outputs that are politically legitimate representations of a collective public voice (see O'Doherty and Burgess 2009). Such a goal is situated within attempts to integrate what Bächtiger et al. (2010) term Type I (procedural processes) and Type II (rhetoric/storytelling processes) deliberations, thereby allowing a more politically sensitive examination of what Sundqvist (2014) terms “hot” issues that may benefit from the process of public deliberation on value-based considerations.

It can be argued that, for participants, the articulated values at stake for advanced lignocellulosic biofuels were the beliefs in economic benefit, environmental sustainability, and respect for our health and human rights (Figure 2, II “key value considerations”). Procedural values concerning the deliberative process were also articulated including the need to respect the views of those opposed to biofuels and the need to build processes of governance that balance the responsibilities of identified stakeholders (Figure 2, III “Selected agenda topics”). These are public values that can help to unravel the social acceptability of difficult value-based trade-offs (discussed below) that must be transparently negotiated as part of the policy recommendation process (van Oudheusden 2014).

A clear definition to social acceptance is hard to find (see Wüstenhagen, Wolsink, and Bürer 2007) but Cohen, Reichl, and Schmidthaler (2014) point to social acceptance of energy projects occurring when the “welfare decreasing aspects of the project are balanced by welfare increasing aspects of the project to leave each agent at worst welfare neutral and indifferent to the completion of the project, or better off and supportive of the project”. Defining social acceptance in this way allows the values that may drive social acceptance to be viewed as outcomes that include economics, environmental change, personal perceptions, and procedural concerns. These drivers will depend on the project examined, but understanding them can help ensure that public values are respected and balanced (at least made welfare neutral) against the pressing, global need for low-carbon solutions in energy and transportation sectors.

The fact that participants of this study desired environmentally friendly products and were concerned about fuel costs, impacts on human health, and the environment will not come as a surprise, as past studies have shown public views of biofuels often relate to these issues (Delshad et al. 2010; Rossi and Hinrichs 2011; Wright and Reid 2011; Cacciatore, Scheufele, and Shaw 2012; Delshad and Raymond 2013). But in contrast to past studies, this study adds a nuance by revealing how one mini-public managed to negotiate various trade-offs among the values underlying these concerns. The results show how persistent concerns over future impacts (opposition) and majority support for enabling advanced lignocellulosic biofuel development (support) can co-exist and create an interconnected conditionality (better reflecting that social acceptance is in reality a dynamic process; cf. Bell, Gray, and Haggett 2005). For instance, while the hopes of participants initially included job creation, a cleaner environment, and lower gas prices (welfare positive drivers), and participant concerns included fuel costs, impacts on the environment, and opposition due to a lack of foregrounding costs and a lack of evidence that advanced biofuels are the best available option (welfare negative drivers), the deliberative structure revealed how participants sought to dynamically balance and trade-off among these views to create a welfare neutral or better situation for all. The collective group recommendations, into which the participants' value-laden trade-offs are embedded, sought to diminish welfare negative drivers by: (1) recommending that any increase in advanced biofuel production come with an attempt to reduce overall fuel consumption, (2) recommending a breakpoint where negative impacts are never allowed to exceed those of fossil fuels, and (3) asking to see a long-term bioenergy strategy that seeks public inclusion and consumer choice (see supplemental data).

These results are one baseline to better understand the dynamic process underlying public values and how a wider public may respond to more intensive policies aimed at advanced lignocellulosic biofuels. They predict that care will need to be taken to better understand public values along Wüstenhagen, Wolsink, and Bürer's (2007) dimensions of socio-political and consumer acceptance, which due to predicted variance in regional location or geography (Ribeiro 2013) requires further investigation. Further, the deliberation made it clear that participants viewed the past and the future as equally important. While clearly focused on advanced lignocellulosic biofuels, many participants found it necessary to still discuss first-generation biofuels as they anticipated a mix of biofuel generations would happen simultaneously. It is important to note that we did not observe participants conflating issues between first- and second-generation biofuels. Instead, their conversations demonstrated an in-depth understanding of the connections between the generations in practice. A key moment for moving forward emerged when the entire group (including the approximately 20% who were opposed to advanced lignocellulosic biofuels) came to common ground on the need to understand and learn from the impacts of first-generation biofuels, investigate how best to respect human rights, assess the ethical risks of producing GM energy crops, and better articulate the advantages and disadvantages of advanced biofuels (Recommendation B, Bullet 2 in supplemental data). This common ground in the final recommendations acknowledges and incorporates recurring questions raised in this deliberation about the availability and sufficiency of current research evidence to support previous and evolving biofuels policy, from which Canadian subsidies are estimated to hit one billion dollars by 2017 and can be added to $100 billion already spent worldwide since 2005 (Auld 2013). Such recommendations have been shared with the Canadian departments Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and NRCan Energy.

Before concluding, it is worth noting some limitations of this research. The presented results arose from a specific method that has been repeated 12 times on various complex science policy issues (Burgess 2014). Nevertheless, the challenges of the method are acknowledged (Stilgoe, Lock, and Wilsdon 2014) and point to directions for future research. For instance, although the results accurately represent the views and value informed reasons of the participants, they are not easily transferable to other groups. Instead, the findings demonstrate the outcomes likely to occur when a diverse group of participants are given the opportunity to learn and deliberate about advanced lignocellulosic biofuels as a type of counter-factual social science experiment. Second, the results should not be viewed simplistically (e.g. participants had opinions, were given information, and then simply updated their views) as deliberative events involve highly complex social negotiations that are cognitively demanding for participants. The results form a unique output of a collective, iterative discussion and form one baseline in an area where little is currently known about how the public views advanced biofuels. Future work is needed to understand and expand upon the drivers influencing participant values. Third, some question outcomes produced through methodologies such as ours (Parkinson 2003), accusing organizers of framing agendas in ways that influence particular outcomes, of which they may have a vested interest. It is for this reason that we combined a detailed information phase with an agenda-setting phase that allowed participants to organically set their own agenda for the second weekend (Figure 1), which we argue is perhaps one of the strongest elements of an arm's length deliberative event. All participants of the deliberation were free to vote “no” to advance lignocellulosic biofuel development and thereby reject the deliberative topic altogether and were solely responsible for identifying discussion topics (Figure 2). This underscores both the legitimacy of the recommendations produced by participants and the self-reflective nature of the method employed. The major risk associated with this design is, of course, that recommendations produced by participants through non-mandated engagement efforts can be ignored and as such can be criticized for failing to “deliver of their promises” (see Stilgoe, Lock, and Wilsdon 2014 discussion of Scheufele 2011).

We conclude by emphasizing that the public values reported here are not only important to global discussion over the future of advanced biofuels (Mohr and Raman 2013), but are also one approach to meet the challenge of their, politically legitimate, extraction as part of socially responsive RI frameworks. This convergence adds a data-driven example to debates in the RI literature about how deliberative processes may help enable the possibility of re-designing technological systems in response to public input. We address the need to problematize deliberative processes related to the politics “in and of RI” (cf. van Oudheusden 2014) through participant-generated agenda items, the expression of value-laden trade-offs, and incorporating dissention from participants into deliberative outputs. Participants recognized that RI related to advanced biofuels will include investment and biotechnological advancement, but warned not to allow this path to become a pre-emptive “investment and development” first and environmental consequences and public inclusion second scenario. The importance of economic profitability was recognized, as was the difficult and dangerous situation of innovating with imperfect environmental knowledge. The results of this event demonstrate a need to foster future inclusive deliberations in this area, as this will help to create a responsible vision for a long-term bioenergy strategy that properly represents the values of our diverse public.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at 10.1080/23299460.2015.1091252

Acknowledgements

The “Advanced biofuels: A public deliberation” event was completed by the Genozymes-GE3LS research team. The Genozymes-GE3LS team designs and tests methods to support public involvement in social and environmental issues relating to biotechnology, genomics and bioenergy. Research team members providing essential theoretical and logistical support for the event: Elyse Amend, Gabriela Capurro, Haluk Dag, Patricia Hanney, Ernest Hoffman, Shereen Joseph, Holly Longstaff, Anna Meshcherova, David Secko, Wendy Smith, Geoffrey Tobin, and Shirley Tran. The authors would also like to thank Terry McIntyre.

ORCID

Holly Longstaff http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2696-4687

Notes on contributors

David Secko is an associate professor in the Department of Journalism and the Centre for Structural and Functional Genomics at Concordia University (Montreal). His research into public deliberation experiments with the roles of the public, experts, and journalists in the democratic governance of biotechnology.

Holly Longstaff is a research associate with the Centre for Structural and Functional Genomics at Concordia University (Montreal). She specializes in applied ethics and policy analysis from a social science perspective.

Gabriela Capurro is a researcher with the Centre for Structural and Functional Genomics at Concordia University (Montreal).

Patricia Hanney is a researcher with the Centre for Structural and Functional Genomics at Concordia University (Montreal).

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by Genome Canada and Genome Quebec.

Notes

1. This is a timely issue in Canada given the current promotion of advanced biofuels, as supported by the Canadian Renewable Fuels Strategy, which mandates 5% bioethanol and 2% biodiesel blend in all ground transportation fuels, and sustainability questions over 97% of ethanol production in the country being currently produced from cereal crops (corn and wheat) (Hanney, Secko, and McIntyre 2013).

2. One participant fell ill after the third day and could not attend the final day of the event.

3. This booklet is available at http://www.csjp.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Advanced-Biofuels-Web-Version-Sept2012.pdf. The topics in the booklet included Canada's energy industry; the science and technology behind the production of biofuels (including the differences between biochemical and thermochemical conversion processes and types of feedstock); challenges to biofuel production; a comparison between first-generation and advanced biofuels in terms of environmental, social and economic impact, sustainability, and ethical considerations; and Canadian policy on biofuels.

4. The members of each small group did not change over the course of the event.

5. The confidentiality of participants was protected at all times during the data analysis phase for this study. All participant data were de-identified by replacing actual names of participants with pseudonyms in all transcripts. The project was approved by the Research Ethics and Compliance Unit at Concordia University and all participants provided informed consent before participating.

6. For the purposes of the event, stakeholders were defined as various groups in Canada that have a stake in advanced biofuel production and consequently have roles in the funding, research, production, or consumption of biofuels.

7. In order to not frame the event with the assumption that there was a need in the mind of participants, this first question was linked to a second question that allowed both a “no” and “yes” vote to lead to setting agenda items for deliberation (e.g. Q2: If so, what considerations should go into its development? If not, why not?).

8. Note that one participant did not attend the final day due to illness, so 25 participants ratified the recommendations.