6. Conclusions

The book’s conclusions summarise the major findings, discuss the transferability of the study’s analytical framework to other policy contexts, and provide an outlook. The study develops recommendations for a rational bioenergy policy, which strives for efficiency and sustainability under constraints imposed by interacting market failures and government failures, while acknowledging the likely non-optimality of outcomes. This approach highlights the necessity of identifying solutions for a rational handling of uncertainty in policy making; moreover, in order to ensure the practical relevance of recommendations, political feasibility considerations have to be taken into account. Parallels between the German bioenergy policy mix and bioenergy policies of other EU and non-EU countries ensure the relevance of case study results for other institutional contexts. Furthermore, with adjustments, the analytical framework can be transferred to other problems of environmental policy making where multiple market failures meet multiple risks of government failures, and uncertainties associated with the environmental costs and benefits of measures are high, such as the emerging field of bioeconomy policy.