The synergy between stakeholders for cellulosic biofuel development: Perspectives, opportunities, and barriers

• Published in: Renewable & sustainable energy reviews 2021-03, Vol.137, p.110613, Article 110613
• Main Authors: Leibensperger, Carrie, Yang, Pan, Zhao, Qiankun, Wei, Shuran, Cai, Ximing
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agent-based model; Bioeconomy; Bioenergy; Cellulosic biofuel development; Stakeholder synergy; Text mining
• ISSN: 1364-0321; 1879-0690
• DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2020.110613

While understanding individual stakeholders' perspectives on the adoption and conversion to a biofuel-based landscape has been a subject of many previous studies on biofuels, there has been relatively little attention given to understanding how the interaction between multiple stakeholders involved in biofuel development could influence the widespread adoption of biofuel production. This paper analyzes the key stakeholder interactions utilizing various data sources including survey results, social media posts, and empirical and theoretical analyses. An intensive review is conducted for a number of surveys and research papers on different aspects of biofuel development such as land use choices, biorefinery and transportation, infrastructure development, consumer priorities, environmental impacts, etc. Following that, a stakeholder synergy approach is applied to synthesizing typical responses of stakeholders, such as producers, consumers, biorefineries, rural communities, and the government, and discussing how their responses influence each other's decisions and the overall system performance. Based on the findings of inadequate stakeholder synergy, it is recommended that new surveys and further research should be conducted to understand why synergy between stakeholders in biofuel development is absent. Additionally, this paper provides research perspectives, including (1) applying cutting-edge text-mining techniques to conduct sentiment analysis, and research and public attention analysis; (2) using an agent-based model to simulate stakeholder interactions and understand the factors that influence stakeholder synergy and the emergence of a bioeconomy. •A stakeholder synergy approach to analyzing cellulosic biofuel development in the United States.•Identified preferences, barriers, and opportunities of multiple stakeholders involved in biofuel production and consumption.•Suggested research efforts to explore and quantify stakeholder synergy for the bioeconomy.