Jan Lask

University of Hohenheim · Institute of Crop Science

Climate change poses a significant global health challenge, with medical procedures contributing substantially to CO2 emissions. Urology, as part of the broader healthcare sector, has begun integrating Planetary Health concepts to address this issue. While earlier studies have focused on Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) of urological procedures, these...

The use of renewable lightweight materials and the adoption of cleaner production are two effective approaches to reduce resource consumption, which contributes to meeting the industry’s environmental impact targets. In a previous study we found, that a miscanthus fibre reinforced cellulose acetate (CA-Miscanthus, 25 wt.%) can be a bio-based altern...

Biodiversity loss is a global problem, with agriculture being a major driver. Every agricultural operation, including management, has an impact on biodiversity because it interferes with nature. It is challenging to assess these impacts. Correspondingly, it can be difficult to support farmers to work in a more biodiversity-friendly way. This paper...

5‐Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is a versatile platform chemical for a fossil free, bio‐based chemical industry. HMF can be produced by using fructose as a feedstock. Using edible, first‐generation biomass to produce chemicals has been questioned in terms of potential competition with food supply. Second‐generation biomass like miscanthus could be an...

The demand for food and renewable energy is increasing significantly, whereas the availability of land for agricultural use is declining. Agrivoltaic systems (AVS), which combine agricultural production with solar energy generation on the same area, are a promising opportunity with the potential to satisfy this demand while avoiding land-use confli...

Agroecosystems provide numerous ecosystem services (ESs) such as provisioning, regulating, habitat and cultural services. At the same time, the management of these agroecosystems can cause various negative impacts on the environment such as the generation of greenhouse gas emissions. However, the way humans manage agroecosystems often focuses only...

Two major global challenges related to agriculture are climate change and the unbalanced nitrogen cycle. For both, national and international reduction targets have been defined to catalyse policy support for more sustainable farming systems. Miscanthus cultivation in water protection areas has been proposed as a contribution to achieving these tar...

Social risk assessment using databases allows sustainability practitioners’ rapid identification of social hotspots in value chains. The Soca database for sustainability assessment allows practitioners to perform a social risk assessment in addition to environmental assessment. As it is based on Ecoinvent, a database for environmental appraisal, th...

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely recognized tool for the assessment of the potential environmental impacts associated with the life cycle of a product or service. The environmental impact category most commonly quantified in LCAs is global warming potential, a measure of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. For agricultural products such as mis...

Resource-efficient perennial cultivation systems are considered promising sources of sustainably produced biomass to meet the growing demand of a future European bioeconomy. They require fewer agricultural procedures than annual systems, contribute to an increase in soil carbon sequestration and can be productive on marginal land. In Europe, the C4...

The combination of bioethanol production and carbon capture and storage technologies (BECCS) is considered an indispensable method for the achievement of the targets set by the Paris agreement. In Croatia, a first-of-its-kind biorefinery project is currently underway that aims to integrate a second-generation ethanol plant into an existing fossil r...

Social Life-Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) is under continuous development. The Methodological Sheets for Subcategories in S-LCA are a set of guidelines commonly used for the performance of such assessments. They cover a variety of stakeholders and subcategories for the social assessment of products in general. However, they may not necessarily be approp...

Carbon neutrality in the transport sector is a key challenge for the growing bioeconomy as the share of biofuels has stagnated over the past decade. This can be attributed to basic economics and a lack of a robust market for these technologies. Consequently, more sustainable biomass supply concepts are required that reduce negative impacts on the e...

Perennial rhizomatous grasses (PRG), such as miscanthus and switchgrass, are considered promising lignocellulosic feedstocks. Their cultivation is expected to experience a significant increase in the near future, as it offers a wide range of benefits. For instance, when PRG replace typical annual crops, positive biodiversity impacts are usually ant...

The research objective of this study is the development of long-term sustainable Marginal Agricultural Land Low-Input Systems for industrial crop cultivation. And the research question of this study is: How bioenergy cropping systems of tomorrow could be made more sustainable under social-ecological terms. It was found that there are five main requ...

Maize silage is the main biogas co‐substrate in Germany, but its use is often questioned due to negative environmental impacts. Perennial wild plant mixtures (WPM) are increasingly considered alternatives, as these extensive systems improve soil quality and enhance agrobiodiversity. Methane yields per hectare however do not match those of maize. Th...

In brief: The consideration and assessment of ecosystem services at the planning stage of new biobased value chains enables the development and implementation of biomass cropping systems that better support biodiversity and resilience in times of climate change than business as usual. For example, ecosystem services support biological pest and dise...

The growing bioeconomy will require a greater supply of biomass in the future for both bioenergy and bio-based products. Today, many bioenergy cropping systems (BCS) are suboptimal due to either social-ecological threats or technical limitations. In addition, the competition for land between bioenergy-crop cultivation, food-crop cultivation, and bi...

The transition towards a bioeconomy is considered a powerful approach to combating current trends of unsustainability. To date, the concept has been widely perceived as a predominantly technical endeavor. This is, however, not sufficient and will not really tackle the global sustainability challenges. Therefore, the imparting of technological knowl...

Environmental issues surrounding conventional annual biogas crops have led to growing interest in alternative crops, such as miscanthus. In addition to the better environmental performance, miscanthus can be grown on marginal land where no competition with feed and food crops is anticipated. On marginal land however, biomass yields are significantl...

Lignocellulosic ethanol represents a renewable alternative to petrol. Miscanthus, a perennial plant that grows on marginal land, is characterised by efficient use of resources and is considered a promising source of lignocellulosic biomass. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to determine the environmental impacts of ethanol production from...

The transition towards a bioeconomy in a challenging and complex environment requires substantial interaction and collaboration between different players on various levels. In this chapter, the concept of a bioeconomy professional is discussed. This actor provides an integrative and connecting role for which the development of basic and key compete...

The future bioeconomy is expected to drive the transition towards a more sustainable economy by addressing some of the major global challenges, including food security, climate change and resource scarcity. The globally increasing demand for food in particular, but also materials and renewable energy, necessitates innovative developments in the pri...