Shades of yellow and green : barriers affecting the liquid biofuels for transport in Romania : a multi-level approach

Sammanfattning: In the light of (super) wicked problems, as climate change is, a deep transformation of energy and transport systems is needed. Among other technological innovations, liquid biofuels were adopted also in Romania as an innovation that could contribute to the transition towards a more sustainable transport. However, the biofuels sector is not well-developed in Romania, in spite of considerable potential existing, and against the early achievement of the rest of the 2020 targets related to renewable energy. In this study my focus is on the key barriers related to development of biofuels sector in Romania, as perceived by stakeholders, exploring the interactions among the main actors and providing an explanation for the underlying structures that facilitate the emergence of these barriers. For this, I relied on the Multi-Level Perspective framework in order to structure barriers and actors at different levels – macro, meso and micro, and theoretical concepts from Post-communism,Europeanization and Ecological Modernization theories. The data I have used was collected mainly through semi-structured interviews, complemented with literature review and other documents. I have identified the institutional and regulatory barriers as the key category of barriers related to biofuels development in Romania, their emergence being facilitated by state capture, corruption, weak institutions, a weak society and lack of transparency, acting as underlying structures. This allowed me to propose several interventions at different levels, in order to facilitate change and contribute towards a more sustainable transport in Romania. Further research can develop from the findings of this study, as out of all categories of barriers identified, the focus here was only on institutional and regulatory barriers. Through this study I aim to cover a gap in research, contributing to the advance of sustainability science literature. It involves those that affect and are affected by the biofuels development in Romania, bringing a transdisciplinary nuance towards the analysis of barriers related to biofuels sector.