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Cooperation in the field of Bioeconomy

 |  Category: SPCleantech News

SPCleantech and Life Science Cluster in Krakow are organizing this year’s first club meeting dedicated to the bioeconomy, which will be held on 21 January 2016 in NordicHouse, the headquarters of SPCleantech. Bioeconomy is one of the specific directions of the Smart Specialisation “Science of Life” in the Malopolska region, which includes technologies, products and processes, renewable, biological resources to produce food, materials and energy.

The program of the meeting:

  • How else to use biogas? Reminiscences of the meeting drafted the Initiative Van (The Energy Solutions)
  • Vanguard initiative and planned topics pilot
  • Bioeconomy Open Space in the ECB 2016 – Invitation to presentation of projects
  • Exchange
  • Networking

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The initiative Vanguard (Vanguard Initiative – New Growth through Smart Specialisation) is a joint venture of 29 regions in Europe, aimed at more effective implementation of smart specialization strategies by:

  • combining regional development programs with strategies at the regional level, country and Europe. Members of the Initiative have agreed on the need to develop common programs, creating critical mass and combining specialist expertise in the field of new technologies and new markets;
  • coordination of joint investment, arising from the implementation of joint programs. Members of the Initiative agreed on the merits of pooling of resources from European funds dedicated new markets and technologies;
  • developing regional partnerships and clusters with the potential development, operating under the smart specialization, to the level of world-class-cluster, giving them the possibility of competition on a global scale. Members of the Initiative have agreed on the need for internationalization of clusters through trans-regional and sectoral partnerships.

Current pilot topics defined within the Initiative Avant-Garde:

  1. Aromatics.
  • The aim is to move towards pilot (kg scale) production so that end-users can test novel materials, as well as to expand current activities and outreach towards end-users and other sectors and to diversify potential feedstocks. There is large industrial interest on this topic and key is to accelerate development through the network such that the EU can keep its top position in this area.
  1. Fine chemicals from lignocellulosic feedstock using fermentation.
  • This case relates to the lignocellulose case proposed by Biobased Delta, wherein fermentation of sugars obtained from sugar beet and lignocellulose will be used at large scale to produce cost-effectively a variety of basic and fine chemicals. An important activity is to map the EU value chain and to build up a business case. Things are gaining pace in The Netherlands, but this approach can be expanded to other region to upscale and get access to wider value chains.
  1. Gas fermentation from gaseous waste streams.
  • The idea here is to use gas as input for production of a number of chemicals. One can start from gas waste streams (e.g. Arcelor Mittal is setting up a big project for ethanol production) or using gasified biomass (e.g. from industrial/municipal waste). The idea is to test and optimize the gas fermentation of a number different gas streams.
  1. Bioplastics for food packaging.
  • This case will focus on the food packaging area as several lead users in different regions are heavily interested/active in this. Key drivers for switch to bioplastics include better performance and sustainability (using local, renewable feedstocks), especially in the niche of ‘biofood’ this is relevant. Activities include developing/testing materials for packaging purposes. Strong involvement of lead users (market pull) is considered key in this area, which applies also to many other Vanguard cases!
  1. Aviation Fuels.
  • Aviation is an interesting area for biofuels because biofuels aviation companies anticipate higher taxes on fossil fuels in the near future. In order to be successful in this area however, it is important to connect to existing key players (notably Sky Energy). Värmland will take stock of the current interests and reflect on a potential case.
  1. Biogas Beyond Energy.
  • Key is to move from a single-product process to a multi-products process. Biogas activities can be expanded in many ways, e.g. by using gas as car fuel or valorizing the digestate as lignocellulose source for production of a number of chemicals and materials. As such, the biogas case relates to many other cases. In the meeting in Milano, two outputs will be targeted: common vision, common roadmap with activities linked to the roadmap.
  1. Food applications from algae feedstocks.
  • An inventory will be made of the different interests and whether they fall within the scope of Vanguard (post research phase), then a decision on this case will be made. To this end, a telco will be organized in the coming weeks.
  1. Food/feed from agrofood waste.
  • From agrofood waste a number of useful components can be extracted, e.g. proteins, which are heavily imported to be used as animal feed. Scotland will develop a first note on the extraction of proteins from brewing/distilling waste for fish feed and then the overlap with interests of other regions interested in feed (South Netherlands) or food (Asturias, Navarra) as well as other regions that may want to join (e.g. Flanders) will be explored.