Category: Stakeholders engagment and co-creation

 SCALIBUR project

 SCALIBUR project

Posted on by Louis Ferrini
Project concluded

Challenge

In the EU over 100 million tonnes of biowaste are thrown away each year. Currently 75% of this goes to landfill or is incinerated, causing major environmental problems: biowaste produces greenhouse gases when it decomposes and contaminates soil and groundwater. Landfilling of biowaste goes against the principle of a circular economy and is a waste of nutrients, energy and potential resources for biobased products.

Solution

In the SCALIBUR project, leading waste management companies, technology developers and research organisations have teamed up with four European cities to demonstrate innovative solutions to transform urban food waste and sewage sludge into high value-added products, helping cities to increase their recycling rate and creating new circular economy business opportunities.

Contacts: James Ling: j.ling@greenovate-europe.eu

Capucine Pineau c.pineau@greenovate-europe.eu

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

 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

 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

 

 

 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

 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

 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