Through an amendment to the Renewable Energies Act(EEG), the German Bundestag introduced in 2012 the so-called “maize cap”, limiting the use of maize or cereal grains as a substrate in new biogas plants. The political decision had been preceded by a short, fierce public debate revolving around social and environmental aspects of an unreasonable extension of maize cultivation. This paper attempts to trace the discourse around the “maize cap” in the six months before the decision in June 2011 and compares the findings to a later discourse window from mid-2012 to April 2013. Analyzing major national daily newspapers and parliamentary records, it identifies seven story lines influencing social discourse at different points in time. It can be shown that dominant discourses were institutionalized in the course of the amendment of the EEG in 2012(“maizification of the landscape”), ultimately leading to – as the paper briefly outlines – abandoning public funding of energy crops in the recent amendment of the EEG 2014.      «

Through an amendment to the Renewable Energies Act(EEG), the German Bundestag introduced in 2012 the so-called “maize cap”, limiting the use of maize or cereal grains as a substrate in new biogas plants. The political decision had been preceded by a short, fierce public debate revolving around social and environmental aspects of an unreasonable extension of maize cultivation. This paper attempts to trace the discourse around the “maize cap” in the six months before the decision in June 2011 and...     »