Author: Louis Ferrini

The European Bioeconomy Network (EUBioNet) is a proactive alliance of EU funded projects dealing with Bioeconomy promotion, communication and support. The main goal is to maximise the efforts, increasing the knowledge sharing, networking, mutual learning, coordination of joint activities and events. The European Bioeconomy Network will work in close collaboration with the European Commission, to ensure that the objectives identified by the Bioeconomy Strategy update will be properly communicated, addressed and implemented.
 POWER4BIO project

 POWER4BIO project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

POWER4BIO project aims at empowering regional stakeholders to boost the transition towards bioeconomy regions in Europe by providing them with the necessary tools, instruments and guidance to develop and implement sound sustainable bioeconomy strategies. In particular, POWER4BIO will define a methodology based on a 3-steps approach (stakeholders engagement, regional analysis and strategy development) to guide European regions when preparing and reviewing their regional bioeconomy strategy and its associated implementation plan (roadmap), and which will be ultimately integrated in a Bioregional Strategy Accelerator Toolkit.

POWER4BIO will also develop a catalogue of bio-based business models, including best practice examples, to support regions understand, identify and select the most adequate bio-based solutions for developing their bioeconomy and; POWER4BIO will issue recommendations to use and align the main funding instruments and policies in Europe to support bioeconomy business models.

Moreover, POWER4BIO will rely on a comprehensive programme to foster mutual learning and intra- and interregional collaboration and networking among regional stakeholders to ensure knowledge transfer across sectors and regions and to jointly develop and complement different sustainable bioeconomy value chains within 10 participant regions member of the consortium (5 of which coming from Central and Eastern Europe) from 9 different countries.

Finally, POWER4BIO will design and deliver an ambitious training programme to increase the skills and capacity of the regional stakeholders in several important aspects of the bioeconomy (sustainability in the bio-based value chains, synergies in funding instruments, technology transfer and entrepreneurship, etc.). All in all, the potential brought in the project is huge, considering that the 10 participant regions represent a population of around 88 million people, a GDP of 2460 billion EUR and an area of almost 450,000 km2.

Contacts: Ignacio Martin: imartin@fcirce.es 
Christine Beusch: beusch@e-p-c.de

Website

 Pilots4U project

 Pilots4U project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Pilots4U is a very visible, easy accessible network of open access pilot and multipurpose demo-infrastructures for the European bio-economy with Europe-wide coverage and protecting IP rights of users. Since pilot- and demo equipment is very expensive and requires specific expertise, open access infrastructures are the most cost-effective manner to support the deployment of industry-driven innovations in the market.

To assure that the network meets the needs of the European bio-economy industry (SMEs, start-ups, Large enterprises), current European pilot and demo-capabilities are continuously

compared with the needs of the European biobased industry.   Different cooperation schemes for the open access pilot- and demo-networkare hereby considered.

Pilots4U is there to help innovators, companies and research institutions operating in the bio-economy sector to gain easier access to more than 100 shared testing facilities and scale-up their technology faster and cheaper towards the market.

Contacts:

Stef Denayer Stakeholder Relations Manager Pilots4U stef.denayer@bbeu.org mob +32 475 820300

Website

 NUTRIMAN project

 NUTRIMAN project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Objective

Agriculture and food industry having a high dependence on resources in their production and striving for long-term sustainability. In this context there is an urgent need to optimise resource use and smooth the transition to a knowledgedriven agriculture. The NUTRIMAN is a Nitrogen and Phosphorus thematic network compiling knowledge “ready for practice” for such recovered product applications, practices and technologies, interconnecting applied science and industrial practice, for the user interest and benefits of the agricultural practitioners. There is an urgent need to spread knowledge and network information towards agricultural practitioners about the insufficiently exploited N/P recovery innovative research results (technologies, products, practices). The project objective is to improve the exploitation of the N/P nutrient management/recovery potential for the ready for practice cases not sufficiently known by practitioners. Our action will open new opportunities for farmers to develop connections between applied researches with practical usefulness results and farming practice in the priority area of nutrient management and nutrient recovery. Uses a bottom-up approach to identify incentives and bottlenecks for adoption and to prioritise between technologies/products and will ensure larger willingness to adopt innovations and improve multiplicator effects. Large scale take up of the recovered N/P innovative fertilisers targeted, produced from un-exploited resources of organic or secondary raw materials in line with the circular economy model, and economical/environmental efficiently used by farmers. Effective dissemination and exploitation promoted by multilingual web platform, other communications and best practice field demonstrations for farmers. This action is contributing to the successful deployment of the vast reservoir of existing scientific/practical knowledge on the N/P recovery theme, including multi lingual abstracts in EIP-AGRI format.

Contacts: Edward Someus: edward@terrenum.net

Website

 MPowerBIO project

 MPowerBIO project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Europe’s bioeconomy strategy addresses the production of renewable biological resources and their conversion into vital products and bioenergy. The industry is leading in innovative and sustainable solutions, but SMEs face challenges as regards investments. To address this issue, the EU-funded MPowerBIO will create an online platform with digital tools for evaluating and training skills, enabling SME readiness for investment. It will hold 10 train-the-trainer sessions for 90 European bioeconomy clusters. The aim is to improve capacity to support SMEs in the high-quality preparation process of presenting their projects to investors. The best SMEs will be selected to compete in two final events. In addition, 72 ready-for-investment SMEs will be selected and rewarded during the European Bioeconomy Venture Forum.

Contacts: Britt Sandvad (coordinator) Food & Bio Cluster Denmark: bs@foodbiocluster.dk

Website

 LANDSUPPORT project

 LANDSUPPORT project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Objective

The objective of LANDSUPPORT is the construction of a web-based smart geoSpatial Decision Support System (S-DSS), which shall provide a powerful set of tools devoted to (i) support sustainable agriculture/forestry, (ii) evaluate trade-off between land uses (including spatial planning) and (iii) contribute to implementation, impact and delivery of about 20 European land policies and also selected 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals including climate change resilience goals and the key SDG 15.3 “achieving a land degradation-neutral world”. This objective is achieved by the integration of already existing databases (interoperability) at different scales with the development of high performance modelling engines simulating agriculture & forestry (e.g.crop growth), land degradation and environmental issues (e.g.fate of pollutants, ecosystem services). All the above, including their validation by remote sensed data will be ensured by a technology at the state of art for the developing environment (i.e.COMPSs) high-performing computing (e.g.GPU) and massive raster data management (e.g.RASDAMAN). LANDSUPPORT will be applied at four geographic scales: EU; 3 Nations (Italy, Hungary, Austria); 2 European Regions in IT and HU; 3 pilot sites in AU, IT, HU; and 2 pilot sites in Tunisia and Malaysia. By doing that, LANDSUPPORT will reconcile grand agriculture/environmental sustainability policy ambitions with operational reality as required by RUR-03-2017 call such as the evaluation of “land use trade-offs” and “incentivizing real actions/behaviour/investments”; all requiring activities at detailed spatial scale. LANDSUPPORT fits with the priorities of this work programme, as LANDSUPPORT S-DSS is (i) scientific and technology innovation as driver for rural development, (ii) a framework for innovation and new business models adapted to the rural context, (iii) support for skills development in rural communities, (iv) a new approach towards policies and governance (subarea 1).

Contacts: Fabio Terribile: fabio.terribile@unina.it

Website

 KETBIO project

 KETBIO project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

This KETBIO project aims at establishing a novel cluster model of biotechnology research projects under HORIZON 2020 to enhance and demonstrate the impact and the outreach of EU funded key enabling biotechnology research. All impact of research is reflected in an appropriate up-take of research outputs through business and society at large as well as through integration into technological and societal systems, the here proposed novel clustering model will thus act as a pivot trajectory to achieve a maximum of these goals for the biotechnology: The proposed cluster will strive to further RTD and innovation through networking and alliance forming and through capacity gains of cluster members. The envisaged clustering of projects and linkage to knowledge transfer activities will allow accelerated industrial exploitation of results through partnering and will maximise impact through exploiting synergies in knowledge transfer and communication. Supporting and coordination activities of KETBIO will lead to the set-up of an actively managed cluster-network of projects facilitating sharing of insights, mutual learning, working group exchange, partnering with industry, dissemination of results and exploring of exploitation pathways.

To reach these goals, KETBIO will

  • Actively promote networking and knowledge exchange between research-industry-policy stakeholders
  • Establish platforms and online working groups for elaboration on RTD and innovation
  • Facilitate capacity building through training, webinars, including a lecture library
  • Provide insights, information and interaction through technology review and science intelligence
  • Enable partnering between research and industry/ policy partners
  • Explore a multitude of exploitation pathways, including dissemination of results to the specialist public and to larger audiences

Contacts: Sylvia Schreiber: sylvia.schreiber@pracsis.be

Website

 Interreg MED Green Growth community

 Interreg MED Green Growth community

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Within the framework of the Interreg MED Programme, Green Growth is a thematic community promoting green and circular economy in the Mediterranean region by enhancing cross-sectoral innovation practices through an integrated and territorially-based cooperation approach. Since 2016, the Green Growth Community (GGC) have involved 165 partners from 13 Euro-Mediterranean countries in 14 innovation projects working on four focus areas:

  • food systems
  • eco-innovation
  • smart cities
  • waste management

The GGC supports its projects in knowledge sharing, communication and capitalisation efforts in order to increase their impact at market and policy levels. The GGC produces unified results and knowledge that are transferred and capitalized to key stakeholders in the Mediterranean region and beyond. It is thereby contributing to achieve the targets of the EU Green Deal and the EU Circular Economy Action Plan, as well as the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) labelled the community in October 2019, acknowledging its potential to support the transition to a green and circular economy and to deliver concrete benefits to the citizens of the Mediterranean region. Since November 2020, the GGC is a member of the Coordination Group of the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform (ECESP).

 

Contacts: Mercè Boy Roura, merce.boy@uvic.cat

Green Growth website 

Capitalisation platform

 

 

 LIFT project

 LIFT project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

LIFT will maximise the impact of Coordination and Support Actions (CSAs) by valorising their outcomes and promoting the collaboration among them. Lift aims at identifying gaps to be addressed to ensure a stimulating environment boosting the bio-based economy. In short LIFT will:

  1. Provide a global vision of objectives and results of past and ongoing Coordination and Support Actions
  2. Maximise the impact of CSAs results, and make them actionable by industries and policy makers.
  3. Analyse existing CSA programming gaps and identify challenges to be addressed, through multistakeholders’ collaboration
  4. Raise awareness and communicate the CSAs’ contribution in addressing bioeconomy-related challenges
  5. Provide actionable recommendations and suggestions for new CSA topics for AWP 2020

LIFT will start with thorough mapping of relevant CSAs, the synthesis of their results and the analysis of CSA programming gaps vis-à-vis long-term bio-based industry objectives.

LIFT will cover the identification of all relevant stakeholders and the creation and animation of a network of stakeholders.

Next, LIFT findings and assets will be made readily available, integrated and especially actionable by industries and policy makers. To this end LIFT will unlock bio-economy CSA outputs through an online library, transform LIFT findings and results into Actionable Knowledge, and organise active stakeholder dialogue through Mobilisation and Mutual Learning (MML) workshops. LIFT activities, events, achievements, findings and online library results will be disseminated widely.

The project will culminate in recommendations for future CSA programming contributing to the creation of a stimulating environment for a sustainable, strong and competitive bio-based industry in Europe.

The recommendations will be validated with EC, BIC and BBI JU. They will include clear measures to ensure sustainability and exploitation of results.

The LIFT consortium is industry-led and well- experienced in BBI JU.

Contacts: Alexandre Almeida: alexandre@loba.pt

Website

 Lifecab project

 Lifecab project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Biowaste management has become a major issue because of the increasing amount of biowastes. These stem from increasing polulation urbanization and consumption habits. Current biowaste management practices are based on fermentation and incineration technologies. These practices produce biogas, compost, thermal and electrical energy. The processing costs exceed the sale value of the products and/or raise issues connected to their secondary environmental impact. Based on previous research work1 carried out by the University of Torino in cooperation with Acea Pinerolese Spa located in Pinerolo (TO), LIFECAB will demontrate in real operational a new process to treat municipal biowaste (MBW) and produce soluble biorganic substances (SBO). These substances will be used as additives for anaerobic fermentation reactors to improve the economy and environmental impact of the current fermentation technology.

The new process, developed at small laboratory pilot level (www.biochemenergy.it), is based on the chemical hydrolysis of fermented MBW in water. It yields all marketable products. It allows recycling all reagents and water. It produces no secondary waste and process effluents needing disposal. Moreover, the SBO have been shown multipurpose products for potential use in the chemical industry, agriculture and animal husbandry. These findings prospect that a MBW treatment plant may be turned into a biorefinery producing biofuel and value added biobased products. Most recent laboratory studies have proven that the addition of 0.05-2% SBO to the MBW organic humid fraction (OHF) fermentation slurry decrease the ammonia content of the digestate, while maintaining biogas production and quality. The effect is presumably due to the capacity of SBO to promote oxidation of ammonia to N2.

Based on the above premises, LIFECAB is a pilot/demonstated project aiming to validate at TRL 7 previous research. This will be achieved by pursuing three main objectives:

  1. validating the SBO production process in real operational conditions;
  2. validating the new SBO assisted anaerobic fermentation process;
  3. demonstrating a new business model, which allows the valorization of biowastes through integrated biochemical and chemical processes in real operational environment with reduced entrepreneurial risk.

Contacts: Enzo Montoneri: enzo.montoneri@gmail.com
Sorani Montenegro: sorani.montenegro@hysytech.com
Simone Solaro: simone.solaro@hysytech.com

Website

 ISABEL project

 ISABEL project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Objective

Community energy sits high in the energy policy agenda as an inseparable part of the strategy towards a low-carbon EU economy. Sustainable biogas technologies have been extremely slow in catching up with community energy developments, failing to benefit from their undeniable potential. ISABEL aims to remove the obstacles and to promote community biogas in the EU by bringing out its societal relevance and by joining forces with a major revolutionary movement – Social Innovation. To achieve and sustain this transition, ISABEL employs modern marketing research to understand the needs and cultural diversities of the communities, fuses Social Innovation to reposition Biogas from an economic bio-fuel carrier to a social good, to come up with new community concepts and to build a stronger and wider community engagement in support of biogas. We zoom in on specific areas with diverse interest and we support communities on the ground to realize community biogas plans in coordination with all the stakeholders, slashing transaction overheads. We bring communities together to exchange and inspire each other as we carefully steer them towards quality sustainability and impact assessment principles. We zoom out to inform the policy world about what works and what does not, what should change and how we can scale-up, replicate and innovate in order to make investments more attractive. We envision a more innovative, better connected, less sensitive to policy and more transparent community biogas movement which will serve as a spring of ideas for other renewable energy technologies.
But we start simple – we want more ideas, more and deeper public involvement, more responsible community biogas plans and more bold and fair policies; and we bring along a highly complementary team of practical minded people to do it.

Contacts: Iakovos Delioglanis: delioglanis@qplan.gr

Website