The £350 million Vivergo bioethanol plant in Hull (England) was officially opened this week by Vince Cable, Member of Parliament, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. The new plant is the UK’s biggest bioethanol producer and largest single-source supplier of animal feed providing valuable commodities that the UK would usually import.
The Biobased Industries Consortium (BIC), a cross sector group of 48 large and small companies, has joined forces with the European Commission to set up an unprecedented Public Private Partnership worth 3.8 billion euros to accelerate the deployment of biobased products in Europe by 2020.
The Biobased Industries PPP is part of the European Commission’s Innovation and Investment Package that was released today in Brussels. The package is intended to stimulate the European economy, create jobs and tackle major societal challenges through research, innovation and deployment. Continue reading
VTT Technical Research Center of Finland – the biggest multitechnological applied research organisation in Northern Europe, that provides high-end technology solutions and innovation services – has assessed the techno-economics of the production of renewable liquid transportation fuels from forest residues. The case studies focused on the production of four biofuels using a method based on pressurised fluidised-bed gasification. The fuels studied were methanol, dimethyl ether (DME), Fischer-Tropsch liquids and synthetic gasoline.
The European Environment Agency has published the Report “EU bioenergy from a resource efficiency perspective”. The report primarily looks at the potential for energy from agricultural land, although it includes forest and waste biomass in the overall analysis (Bioenergy refers to energy uses of any kind of biomass, whether for heating, power generation or transport).
The European Commission has selected and appointed the 30 members of the Bioeconomy Panel, a new platform for informed discussions on the Bioeconomy.
These experts represent a wide variety of interests – scientific community and researchers, primary producers, industry, policy-makers, and civil society – and they are nominated for an initial mandate of 2 years.
Their role is to closely assist the Commission in the implementation of the Bioeconomy Strategy in Europe.
Parco Tecnologico Padano, a science and technology park based in North of Italy (Lodi, Milan area) and the Municipality of Milano are running a competition for selecting entrepreneurial projects in the bioeconomy sector coming out from international scouting.
Last Wednesday, the five winners were announced by the Secretary for Innovation and Research of the Municipality of Milano, Mrs. Cristina Tajani.
How to use coffee waste for cosmetics, an innovative way of producing fibers from oranges, microalgae for nutrition, seeds conservation and a platform for prevention of fruit plants diseases are the areas covered by the 5 winners of the competition.
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At the Paris Air Show 2013, Airbus, Air France, Safran – a leading international high-technology group with three core businesses: aerospace, defence and security – and oil giant Total organized the “Joining our Energies – Biofuel Initiative France” flight to illustrate the French industry’s technical capacity to integrate aeronautical biofuels. The four players underline the need to improve research into the development of sustainable biofuels with a view to creating a French biofuel industry.
Today, the air transport sector generates around 2% of global man-made CO² emissions. Manufacturers are fully mobilized to reduce the impact of air transport by all possible means. As the aviation industry has no alternative to liquid fuels of fossil origin, the use of biofuels is essential for drastically reducing CO² emissions.
Leading companies and policy makers are collaborating to fuel the growth of the bioeconomy in Europe. The partnership of Biobased and Renewable Industries for Development and Growth in Europe (BRIDGE) is industries vision for building stronger more sustainable value chains, based on renewable raw materials, across Europe. It is the result extensive dialogue between a broad range of sectors, SMEs, Research Institutes and policy makers and, if adopted, will form part of the EU’s new Research and Innovation programme, Horizon 2020. Continue reading
The term start-up has burst on the political agenda of the Italian government. First with the Minister Corrado Passera, who in the period past at the Ministry for Economic Development was able to approve the decree Development 2.0, now with Premier Enrico Letta, who in the start-ups sees a fundamental tool to solve the tragedy of youth unemployment and who recently promised to “remove barriers and bureaucracy” to set up a business.
In the various sectors of the bioeconomy, there are many start-ups founded in Italy in recent years. One of these is Micro4you, a spin-off of the University of Milan, specialized in the production of micro-organisms for a variety of uses: from the restoration of historical monuments to animal health. In this interview, its CEO, Annalisa Balloi, tells how is a young innovative company and what are the real problems that it faces. Since “for those who – like us – focuses its attention on niche products, the administrative procedures are too complex and expensive”.
Interview by Mario Bonaccorso
Oil major BP is directing investment in advanced biofuels to the United States and South America due to uncertainty about the European Union’s future regulatory environment.
“At the moment we are not contemplating investing in second-generation cellulosic (ethanol) in Europe simply for the reason that there is not enough certainty on what the market conditions will be like,” Phil New, head of BP Biofuels, said in an interview with Reuters UK.
IL BIOECONOMISTA 