Pursuing Aviation Biofuels. A Diagnostic Analysis of the Swedish Biojet Innovation System

Abstract: Globally, aviation biofuel (biojet) technology has reached a degree of progress that allows immediate substitution of conventional fossil fuel in commercial air travel. However,numerous factors constitute an impediment to its large-scale use and deployment: a diagnostic analysis identifying key obstacles to biojet development is needed. For this reason, an examination of actors, institutions and activities existing in the Swedish landscape is performed. The research uses the System of Innovation framework to identify key factors having an impact on the biojet innovation process and to map out the current state of play. The analysis indicates that a large number of actors and institutions can influence the innovation system. Only a limited amount of organisations is proactively contributing to the system success, whereas a large group of actors are generally favourable to biojet development but participate somewhat passively to the innovation process. In particular, a major barrier to development is constituted by the scarce involvement of the Swedish public authority, which could foster the innovation process by setting binding targets, providing financial incentives and encouraging collaboration among stakeholders. Limits in the significance of results are due the categorisation approach, which prevents to consider the whole picture of the innovation system, and due to the inability of comparing the Swedish system with other national studies; the latter issue can be overcome by conducting analogue research in other settings.