Ethical and legal challenges in bioenergy governance: Coping with value disagreement and regulatory complexity

• Ethical and legal challenges in governance of liquid biofuels and wood pellets.
• EU sustainability criteria legal and ethical analysis—EU bioenergy policy options.
• Analysis of interplay between carbon and non-carbon concerns and regulatory options.
• Governance must cope with value disagreement and regulatory complexity.

The article focuses on the interplay between two factors giving rise to friction in bioenergy governance: profound value disagreements (e.g. the prioritizing of carbon concerns like worries over GHG emissions savings over non-carbon related concerns) and regulatory complexity (in terms of regulatory measures and options). We present ethical and legal analyses of the current stalemate on bioenergy governance in the EU using two illustrative cases: liquid biofuels for transport and solid biomass-based bioenergy. The two cases disclose some similarities between these two factors, but the remaining differences may partly explain, or justify, contrasting forms of governance. While there seems to be no easy way in which the EU and national governments can deal with the multiple sustainability issues raised by bioenergy, it is argued that failure to deal explicitly with the underlying value disagreements, or to make apparent the regulatory complexity, clouds the issue of how to move forward with governance of bioenergy. We suggest that governance should be shaped with greater focus on the role of value disagreements and regulatory complexity. There is a need for more openness and transparency about such factors, and about the inherent trade-offs in bioenergy governance.