Category: Projects

 ISAAC project

 ISAAC project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Objective

Although Italy has a great potential for biogas production, many non-technical barriers are still present in the current framework. Some of the limiting factors involve public acceptance of the biogas facilities diffusion, as well as lack of a reliable coordination between different stakeholders. Furthermore, normative and legislative inadequacies and deficiencies haven’t facilitated the implementation of these technologies within the national context.
The main project objective consists on the construction of a communicative model oriented to spread balanced information, based on environmental and economic benefits, between all the actors potentially involved in biogas/biomethane implementation. At the same time, actions will be focused on reducing the fragmentation between farmers, foresters and other stakeholders in order to reach the minimal facility dimension needed, increased biogas and biomethane penetration and reduce cost management.
A participatory process model will be developed as the main project’s approach to reduce social conflict and to include all actors in important common decision making process; starting from the experience, a normative proposal on the participatory process will be recommended.
The effectiveness of the proposal will be maximized applying the actions on specific and restricted areas: the study of the energetic unhatched potential deriving from anaerobic digestion of residual biomass or organic waste will constitute the starting point for communication and information campaigns toward the territory and its stakeholders. The attention will be focused on some high energetic potential regions where the diffusion of these technologies struggles to be realized and the effects of project actions on awareness and acceptance will be evaluated.
In particular, a specific decisional participative model will be implemented and applied in one of the selected districts, as case study, involving in an active way all the stakeholders.

Contacts: Azzeroco2: ricerca@azzeroco2.it

Website

 InnProBio project

 InnProBio project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

For public procurement to become the enabler of the bio-based economy craved by the EU, procurement authorities will need to work collectively and enable procurers to make more informed decisions. The InnProBio project has been clearing the way.

The EU’s confidence in bio-based products seems unshakeable: by 2020, it hopes to be the undisputed leader of a bio-based market worth some EUR 200 billion. The question is, how can this be achieved? Many stakeholders will point at public procurement as a key enabler – especially for niche or still burgeoning markets. But the truth is that procurers and decision makers are not equipped to make the best and most informed decision.

This is where the InnProBio (Forum for Bio-Based Innovation in Public Procurement) project kicks in. By building a community of public purchasers interested in bio-based products, its eight company-strong consortium aimed to help them identify relevant solutions and show them how bio-based products and services can fit into their innovation and procurement actions.

“Creating a community around the hot topics of bio-based products and services (BBPS) and public procurement of innovation (PPI) is important because, as we speak, there is no widespread pool of public procurement practitioners. Such a community would help disseminate information and knowledge and would also lead to an increase in procurement of BBPS and PPI,” says Moritz Westkämper, coordinator of InnProBio on behalf of the German Agency for Renewable Resources (FNR).

This seems only logical: whilst public purchases represent around 14 % of the EU’s GDP, converting this market power into a market pull mechanism requires the public sector to act as a single ‘unit’. This, in turn, can only be achieved with dedicated networks, tools and resources that are currently missing, and InnProBio aimed to fill the gap.

The first step consisted in mapping stakeholder needs: “The workshops that we organised quickly made it clear that there was a need for proper information to be made available in a compact format. This is why we designed an online toolbox containing information for public procurement, a set of factsheets, a glossary and other procurement tools such as tender text blocks, good practice cases and so on,” Westkämper explains.

Another thing that came out was the need for support from management positions (top-down support). The desire to procure sustainable BBPS indeed seemed to be insufficient, and public procurement practitioners would most likely stand to benefit from goals being set out by ministries and governments.

“All in all, we identified a series of barriers: a lack of knowledge of bio-based concepts and market; a lack of procurement methods; a lack of political and management support; a lack of communication within organisations; and other barriers related to costs, industry-specific barriers and a lack of trust,” says Westkämper.

The consortium is confident that the online toolbox, along with workshops and market dialogues, will help remove these barriers. If these are combined with a unified approach and support from management positions to public procurement practitioners, as well better communication within departments and between different procurement departments, they believe that a community of practice could arise and that buying groups could create a market opening for BBPS.

In the long run, the developed tools will help public procurement practitioners look for BBPS and procure them. There is a justified hope that fossil-based products and services will be replaced by BBPS. The public service has such a market power that an established procurement of BBPS could mirror consumer behaviour and thus lead to a sustainable society.

Now that the project has been completed, the InnProBio team intends to use the information material and procurement tools they developed in other EU-funded projects. Project partners are also taking up the results at the national level, with one prominent project being the German national procurement project ‘Nachwachsende Rohstoffe im Einkauf’ supporting the procurement of bio-based products in Germany, which organises workshops and market dialogues. “The project notably created a ‘bio-based office’ which is presented at procurement fairs as a pop-up office. This is a unique opportunity to see and experience first-hand how a bio-based office can look,” Westkämper concludes.

Contacts:

Martin Behrens, Fachagentur Nachwachsende Rohstoffe e.V. (FNR): m.behrens@fnr.de

John Vos, BTG Biomass Technology Group BV: vos@btgworld.com

Website

 ICT BIOCHAIN project

 ICT BIOCHAIN project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

ICT-BIOCHAIN is a project aiming to promote the adoption of ICT, IoT and industry 4.0. solutions to improve the efficiency of biomass value chains. In order to achieve this, it developed a platform to connect stakeholders in the bio-based industry with ICT providers, and it established two Digital Innovation Hubs, located in ready-made, test-bed bioeconomy regions: South-East Ireland and Andalusia (Spain). Leading experts and support networks developed region-specific bio-resource data models and provided access within these hubs to best practices, expert knowledge, and information.

Contacts: Ana I. Martinez: anamartinez@sustainableinnovations.eu  and info@ictbiochain.eu

Website

 GREENPROTEIN project

 GREENPROTEIN project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

GreenProtein is an European project which aims at a major innovation in the fields of protein production and food loss reduction in the EU by producing high-added value, food-grade functional proteins and other ingredients, out of green field waste.

The general objective of the GreenProtein project, that gathers 7 different European partners during 4.5 years, is to establish a demo plant for the extraction and purification of functional RuBisCo protein isolate at industrial scale. GreenProtein will demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of the revalorisation of green residues from existing agroindustry.

The demo plant is design so it is a replicable system with a high spreading projection in the whole EU.

Contacts: Africa Matilda Pardavila Morris: africa.pardavila@innovarum.es

Website

 GO-GRASS project

 GO-GRASS project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Grasslands are important for land use in Europe, covering more than a third of the European agricultural area. Grasslands are also diverse in terms of management, yield and biodiversity value, providing forage and other key resources for Europe’s livestock sector. The EU-funded GO-GRASS project will create new opportunities in rural areas based on grassland and green fodder. These will be tested in four EU regions at small scale to ensure wide replication. Within a circular system, the project will develop business models that are circular, sustainable and suitable for remote areas with unexploited resources. The GO-GRASS consortium comprises a multidisciplinary team of 22 partners from 8 European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, Romania, Spain, and Sweden).

Contacts: Philipp Grundmann (coordinator): go-grass@atb-potsdam.de
Natalie Höppner (communication & dissemination): nah@esci.eu

Website

 GoDanuBio project

 GoDanuBio project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Danube regions and cities face major societal challenges regarding demographic change and brain drain. Rural exodus, loss of opportunities for youth and territorial imbalances are only the tip of the iceberg. However, Danube regions can make a change. A new beginning is possible through multi-level governance and stronger institutional capacities.

The bioeconomy potential of the Danube macro-region is vast. GoDanuBio advocates for the circular bioeconomy as a main tool to revitalize rural areas and establish rural-urban synergies from the Black Forest to the Black Sea. A way ahead is bioeconomising[1] clusters landscapes and value chains, and shaping innovation ecosystems. GoDanuBio inherits the results of DanuBioValNet project (2017-2019) and with a wider thematic scope focuses on participative governance and mutual learning to unleash transformation.

[1] The full deployment of the bioeconomy potential lies in the engagement and participation of all related-industries and stakeholders through the bio-based value chains. Missing gaps should be identified and integrated.

Contacts: Sergi Costa (Coordinator): costa@bio-pro.de

Teodora Atanasova (Communication): teodora.atanasova@brait.bg

Website

 Glaukos project

 Glaukos project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

The EU-funded Glaukos project aims to develop innovative and environmentally sustainable textile fibres and coatings. The complete life cycle of these textiles will be redesigned: their sustainability performance (i.e. biodegradability and bio-recyclability) will be enhanced significantly, while their technical performance will be matched to end-user requirements. Glaukos builds on two concepts: triggerable biodegradability as a key concept in polymer design to mitigate textile-based microplastics pollution, and bio-recycling as a sustainable end-of-life solution. The supply chain distance is also substantially reduced by scaling up a disruptive way of producing the main polymer building block from several bio-based feedstocks. The underlying objective of Glaukos is to reduce the carbon and the plastic footprint of clothing and fishing gear. Stakeholders’ engagement will be encouraged through the involvement of individuals from the clothing and fishing gear industry.

Contacts:

Project Coordinator Zsófia Kádár zsofia.kadar@bbeu.org

Project Manager Tanja Meyer tanja.meyer@bbeu.org

Project Communication and Dissemination Manager Louis Ferrini ferrini@fvaweb.it

Website

 FASTER project

 FASTER project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Objective

FASTER – Farmers’ Adaptation and Sustainability in Tunisia through Excellence in Research will reinforce research and knowledge transfer capacity of INRGREF related to innovative land and water management in view of climate change and its implementation through the use of Farm Advisory Systems (FAS). To achieve this, we will develop a sustainable framework for research capacity building, international networking and FAS practice. Strengthening of researchers and technicians of INRGREF and associated centres (IRESA) will be developed by EU partners of established scientific excellence in the topic (CREAF, LU) and demonstrated experience in economic impact and awareness raising (EFB, Vision), and integration into national policies (AVFA). The proposal is structured into 5 work packages, during 3 years and amounting 1million €, including: coordination; capacity building through training and staff exchanges; living lab stablishing through summer schools, e-learning and stakeholder involvement; project sustainability by monitoring, networking and governmental support; and communication through awareness raising and knowledge co-creation. Expected impacts to INRGREF and Tunisian partners are increased number of publications in peer review journals, mobility and international co-funding, increased international reputation, awareness and engagement, new skills and competencies, new services and employment related to FAS, and new research avenues.

Contacts:

Dr Sihem Jebari, FASTER Project Coordinator:sihem.jebari@gmail.com
Chiara Colalelli (Communication and Dissemination): chiara@vision-communication.org

Website

 ENABLING project

 ENABLING project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

ENABLING is the initiative of 16 partners in 13 EU and associated (IL, NO) countries. The main goal is to support the spreading of best practices and innovation in the provision (production, pre-processing) of biomass for the BBI (Bio-Based Industry).

In particular, ENABLING aims at creating appropriate conditions for the development of efficient biomass to BBPs (Bio-Based Products and Processes) value chains.

The consortium’s vision is that Europe bears a huge potential for optimising the supply of biomass into innovative bio-based processes and products.

Upscaling biomass production and pre-processing, and combining streams towards the BBPs with those of more traditional bioenergy chains would enhance at least three interlinked types of impact. a) biomass production gains scale to meet higher demand in both sectors (bioenergy and the BBI); b) the reinforcement of biomass supply for the BBI benefits smaller BBI players, helping them diversify and consolidate biomass input sources; c) reinforcing the biomass and BBPs linkages may contribute to job-creation, due to the increased need for specialised workers.

To realise such potential, ENABLING also anticipates its longer term exploitation pathways. In the intention of the consortium, the project should aggregate and engage partners for the establishment of a permanent innovation brokerage platform, likely to become in the future, one of the main marketplaces and innovation transfer accelerators at European level.

In this sense, the project organises its work around two building blocks: one relates to animating the stakeholders (on the farming and BBPs sides), identifying best practices, turning them into easy to access content (in the EIP format) for their potential users and providing stakeholders with coaching and guidance on innovation. The other one looks at future developments, with the consolidation, in a self-sustainable way, of the innovation brokerage platforms after the end of the EU funded initiative.

Contacts: Zusepe Elias Zidda: zusepe.zidda@euknow.eu

Website