Category: Projects

 RoadToBio project

 RoadToBio project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

RoadToBio will deliver a roadmap that will specify the benefits for the chemical industry along the path towards a bioeconomy to meet the societal needs in 2030. The roadmap will contain the following two main components:

(1) An analysis of the most promising opportunities (sweet spots) for the chemical industry to increase its bio-based portfolio, as well as the technological and commercial barriers and the hurdles in regulations and acceptance by society, governing bodies and the industry itself.

(2) A strategy, action plan and engagement guide to overcome the existing and anticipated barriers and hurdles as mentioned above. Furthermore it will bring together different parts of chemical industry, society, and governing bodies, to start a dialogue and to create a platform where this action plan can unfold its full potential, in order to help meet the very ambitious targets of the BIC for 2030.

The approach is based on three pillars, which are

(a) analysis of status quo and potentials,
(b) forward looking activities,
(c) continuous feedback loops and interactions with stakeholders.

The results will be wrapped up and phrased as a roadmap and an engagement guide describing the benefits and a way forward for the European Chemical Industry towards a more bio-based future. In order to derive a holistic roadmap that can lead the way, the analytical part of the project will consider feedstocks, technologies and markets as well as regulatory issues, societal needs, consumer questions and communication.

The consortium partners bring in complementary expertise in relevant fields of the bioeconomy and chemical industry, covering in depth all aspects that need to be included in the roadmap. All partners have been or are still actively involved in successfully completed and ongoing FP7, H2020, and BBI projects on different aspects of the bioeconomy, as well as in several groups and committees working on political or standardization aspects of bio-based products.

Contacts: Lea König: lea.koenig@dechema.de

Website

 PRO-ENRICH project

 PRO-ENRICH project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

The Pro-Enrich project will develop a flexible biorefinery approach able to processing a range of agricultural residues from rapeseed meal, olives, tomatoes and citrus fruit industries. This will help fulfil the growing global demand for alternative sources of protein and phenolic product streams.

The Pro-Enrich project will develop a flexible biorefinery approach able to processing a range of agricultural residues from rapeseed meal, olives, tomatoes and citrus fruit industries. This will help fulfil the growing global demand for alternative sources of protein and phenolic product streams.

Pro-Enrich take the process of fractionising biomass to a new level, identifying proteins, polyphenols, dietary fibres and pigments for use as food ingredients, pet food, cosmetics and adhesives.

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

Website

 ProBIO project

 ProBIO project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

ProBIO is a support action directly benefiting consortia of FP7 KBBE and H2020 bioeconomy. The overall objective is two-fold:

  1. To support the flow of knowledge-based bioeconomy project results from research to market, as well as back to R&I.
  2. To foster the networking and knowledge exchange between different European bioeconomy initiatives under H2020 and FP7 and the most important players in the field thus raising awareness towards policy makers and engaging the general public.

To achieve its objectives, ProBIO screens all 411 KBBE projects for results, describes them in interaction with the KBBE consortia, and finally classifies each result according to its nature. The results will be of different technological maturity level: some will be mature for direct market introduction, others need further development to reach a higher TRL, and some are not technological results, but knowledge and instruments of relevance to policy makers.
The ProBIO experts take this diverse nature and maturity level of research results into account and support each type of result with dedicated professional coaching and tools with a view to:

  1. Accelerating market entry through business coaching of the most promising R&D results
  2. Facilitating the flow of knowledge into new R&I projects in order to reach a higher TRL level
  3. Feeding policy-relevant results into the political process to inform policy making

ProBIO also foresees a range of events and communication activities supporting knowledge exchange and linkage of different actors along the bioeconomy value chains and making use of synergies through networking.

The multi-disciplinary team of the ProBIO consortium is built around highly specialised green innovation consultancies and a European expert group who together have an outstanding track record in promoting the uptake of results from public research. Additional thematic expertise is ensured by two technical centres, and communication is in professional hands, too.

Contacts: Ilaria Bonetti: ilaria.bonetti@mi.camcom.it

Website

 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