Paper long abstract:

Energy has been increasing in prominence as a key policy arena for the EU. Sustainability, security and commercial concerns have been used to justify large-scale investment and have materialised into legally binding commitments for EU countries. One such example lies with the initiatives for the increasing adoption of biofuels. However, first-generation biofuels have fallen out of favour due to issues around land use and energy yields, instead being replaced by 'advanced' biofuels towards fulfilling the same policy goals. Recently, strategies for biofuel production have started envisioning the tailoring of organisms for specific purposes (rather looking for the most appropriate naturally occurring organisms) and synthetic biology is increasingly called upon to make that tailoring possible.

In this work, I explore how synthetic biology is being positioned in the European Union's framework programmes to attain policy goals. I do so through an empirical study of a collaborative research project aiming to produce of microbial biofuels funded under FP7 and the policy context in which it is unfolding. In particular, I probe why bigness is the solution to making synthetic biology work and what kind of expertise is being recruited; the role industrial partners are playing in the research project; and how visions of the future promoted by the Horizon 2020 framework are impacting on how the partners develop the research project and how the community grows.