The U.S. Department of Agriculture has released a list of its 2015 top achievements. According to the department, these achievements demonstrate efforts to help farmers and ranchers build the American bioeconomy.
Dear Readers,
thank you very much, heartily. 2015 ended with excellent results for Il Bioeconomista: over 46% more visits to our blog. It is a real boom, which shows how the bioeconomy is increasingly a phenomenon that attracts the attention of global public opinion and gratifies us as journalists, observers of a reality that we have always defined as the industrial revolution of the Third Millennium.
The bioeconomy is innovation, the result of the skills and passion of researchers and managers able to create value and new high-qualified jobs. At the end of 2014 Il Bioeconomista launched a new initiative: The 10 Most Innovative Bioeconomy CEOs. We ask a panel of world bioeconomy experts to tell us the Chief Executive Officers that have stood out as the most innovative during the last year.
This is the result in 2015:
Caserta re-starts from the bioeconomy. If the Southern Italian city between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries was known everywhere for the quality of its silk, today can aspire to become a center of gravity of the new sustainable bio-based economy. Here, GF Biochemicals launched last July the commercial-scale production of levulinic acid, using biomass as feedstock. The levulinic acid is a chemical building block that is used in various industrial sectors, from pharmaceuticals to cosmetics, from personal care to flavors and fragrances, from coating to fuel additives. In 2015 the company has produced 2 thousand tons and aims at producing 10 thousand tons in 2017 and up 50 thousand tons by 2019. A revolution, if we think that the company located in Caserta is certain to offer to the market in a few years the bio-based levulinic acid to a price of one dollar per kilo, versus the current 4-5 dollars per kilo for the corresponding product from oil, offering the same performance.
The protagonists of this bio-revolution, which is a key to economic development crucial for Italy and the Southern Italy in particular, are Pasquale Granata, young local entrepreneur, and Mathieu Flamini, the famous Arsenal player, former AC Milan, who unveiled a few days ago his involvement in the company in an interview with the Sun on Sunday.
In this exclusive interview is Pasquale Granata to talk with us about GFBiochemicals and the bioeconomy, as a key to regional regeneration to create economic development and new jobs within a framework of eco-sustainability.
Interview by Mario Bonaccorso
“The bioeconomy can and should be the path for the re-industrialization of Brazil, fostering much needed innovations and development of products and processes that will fast-track the establishment of the this new norm in a global scale”. To say this – in this exclusive interview with Il Bioeconomista – is Bernardo Silva, Executive President at Brazilian Industrial Biotechnology Association (in Portuguese ABBI – Associação Brasileira de Biotecnologia Industrial), a trade association that brings together companies and institutions developing and using microorganisms and its derivatives to deliver renewable products for industries and consumers worldwide. The founding members of ABBI are Amyris, BASF, BioChemtex, BP, Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira, Dow, DSM, DuPont, GranBio, Novozymes, Raízen and Rhodia. With Silva we talk about Brazilian bioeconomy and the country’s national strategy to support the field. “The ambition to establish a vibrant bioeconomy in Brazil, which values our comparative advantages and is able to realize the opportunities arising from this new model of development, entails a joint effort between government, business and civil society to discuss, define and practice a plan that ensures the alignment of policies in place and long-term strategies, paving the way for Brazil fulfill its role as a leader a global bio-based economy.”
Interview by Mario Bonaccorso
The bioeconomy is protagonist at COP21 in Paris. BioAmber, a leader in renewable materials, yesterday announced that it has joined the American Business Act on Climate Pledge, alongside more than 140 companies from across the American economy that are standing with the Obama Administration to demonstrate an ongoing commitment to climate action and to voice support for a strong outcome to the COP21 Paris climate negotiations.
Germany leads the world bioeconomy. Berlin was for three days (24-26 November) the venue of the Global Bioeconomy Summit which was attended by many of the protagonists of this meta-sector from Europe, Asia, Africa and America (approximately 700 people).
Chris Patermann is simply the “father” of the European bioeconomy. Since January 2004 he was Programme Director for “Biotechnology, Agriculture & Food” Research at the Research Directorate-General of the European Commission, which from 2007 also comprised Aquaculture and Fisheries as well as Forestry. During these years he was responsible for the elaboration of the new concept of the Knowledge Based Bioeconomy (KBBE), which today is known as bio-based economy or more simply bioeconomy in Europe. He was also appointed Chairman of the oldest Committee between EU Member States and the European Commission, the Standing Committee on Agricultural Research, SCAR. He also served for 4 years as co-chair in the important EC-US Task Force Life Sciences and Biotechnology Research. In August 2007 Christian Patermann retired. He now lives in Bonn and advises public and private institutions and companies, among them the largest German Land NorthRhine-Westphalia, the Fraunhofer Society, the Swiss Agricultural Research Council etc.
With Chris Patermann, who is one of the most influential people in the European bioeconomy, we talk – in this long exciting exclusive interview – about what was the vision that inspired the beginnings of the European strategy on bioeconomy, but also the future of this meta-sector through which the European Union can aspire to economic growth, creation of jobs and environmental sustainability.
Interview by Mario Bonaccorso
Former AC Milan and France midfielder Mathieu Flamini is a bioeconomy’s supporter. He has revealed that he is one of the people behind GFBiochemicals, a bio-based company that has developed a process to produce levulinic acid on an industrial scale.
IL BIOECONOMISTA 