Biofuels have been promoted since the 1980s as a potential solution to a variety of problems, ranging from oil dependency and agricultural surpluses to climate change and rural poverty. Against the background of the erratic and sometimes contradictory course of German biofuel policy, Bio-Ecopoly staff member and political scientist Thomas Vogelpohl's dissertation traces the discursive construction of biofuels as a solution to multiple problems as well as its reflection in political decisions in Germany in the last thirty years. He investigates how biofuels could achieve and sustain the status of a legitimate political solution and how this complex process of social construction can be understood against the backdrop of historically specific political-institutional and paradigmatic framework conditions.

The dissertation by Thomas Vogelpohl is now published as a book titled “Biokraftstoffpolitik in Deutschland. Zur diskursiven Konstruktion einer multiplen Problemlösung” and available from Springer VS as part of the series “Energy Policy and Climate Protection”.

Thomas Vogelpohl (2018): Biofuels policy in Germany. For the discursive construction of a multiple problem solution. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-658-22612-1.

Link: https://www.springer.com/en/book/9783658226114

Projekt „Politische Prozesse der Bioökonomie zwischen Ökonomie und Ökologie“ (Bio-Ökopoli)