Room: Amazon
Date: Thursday, 21 May 2026
Time: 11:30 - 12:45 CEST
Session code 2CO.5
From sustainability assessments to social dimensions of biomass and bioenergy
AI-Enhanced Co-Creation of Gender-Just Bioenergy Pathways: Integrating Foresight, Policy, and Education pathways.
Short Introductive summary
Achieving Europe’s 2050 vision of equal and inclusive access to clean energy requires embedding gender equality within bioenergy systems. Within the Horizon Europe gEneSys project (Transforming Gendered Interrelations of Power and Inequalities in Transition Pathways to Sustainable Energy Systems), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and participatory foresight were combined through a backcasting methodology to co-create gender-just pathways for the bioenergy transition. Stakeholders from academia, policy, and civil society identified two interdependent pathways: Education, which builds awareness and interdisciplinary capacity, and Policy, which establishes gender-responsive governance, data systems, and financial mechanisms. AI-assisted content and ontology analysis revealed interconnections between inclusion, innovation, and institutional reform. The findings demonstrate that gender equality acts as a structural enabler of sustainable bioenergy systems, strengthening legitimacy and resilience. The framework shows how AI-driven foresight can align technological progress with social justice, advancing a just and inclusive bioenergy and bioeconomy towards Net Zero by 2050.
Presenter
Rocio DIAZ-CHAVEZ
Imperial College London, Centre for Environmental Policy, UNITED KINGDOM
Presenter's biography
Dr Diaz-Chavez is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Environmental Policy of Imperial College London since 2004. She was Deputy Director at SEI Think Thank in Kenya (2017-2022). She researches on sustainability assessment and deployment of bioeconomy, bioenergy, land use.
Biographies and Short introductive summaries are supplied directly by presenters and are published here unedited
Co-authors:
Session reference: 2CO.5.5