Brussels – Accelerating investment and establishing a clear regulatory framework to support the industrial scaling up and market launch of bioeconomy products at competitive prices. This is the call that, from the Stakeholder Forum of the Circular Bio‑based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU) held in Brussels on March 24, the European bioeconomy sector is making to EU lawmakers. With the clear imperative to be careful not to repeat what happened with solar panels, a sector in which Europe was a leader and has gradually lost ground to China, from which it now imports 98 per cent of its products.
From dashboards for cars made from almond shells to seaweed-based cosmetics and coffee capsules produced from agricultural waste. And more, from the best-known supermarket bioplastics to fashion items such as shoes to textiles and chemical products: these are just a few examples of bioeconomy products, that is, goods produced not from petroleum-derived materials, but from locally produced alternatives of biological origin. “And we are obviously talking about investments, facilities, jobs, and products which are already on the market,” explains on the sidelines of the Forum, Mario Bonaccorso, director of Cluster Spring, the Italian circular bioeconomy cluster which represents over 160 Italian and international players in the bioeconomy active across the peninsula, including universities, centres public or private research centres, SMEs, associations sector-specific organisations, large multinationals, but also banking groups, venture capital firms or specialist consultancy firms.
At the EU level, the Commission’s bioeconomy strategy, presented in November, “is certainly an important step forward,” but there is a “need for an action plan, to take action through legislation, and also through a legal definition of the bioeconomy, which is still lacking at the European level.” The fear, therefore, is that technologies developed in Europe may be industrialised elsewhere, in countries with lower production costs and lighter administrative burdens. “We see and perceive many risks, partly because there are countries that have invested heavily in recent years in this sector, where Europe has led the way and where we hope it does not lose its leading position,” explains Giulia Gregori, head of systemic programme management at Novamont, an Italian company specialising in bioplastics and biochemicals using plant-based resources, one of the 400 participants at the 40-country Forum. “With its 15th Five-Year Plan, China has reaffirmed the bioeconomy as a key sector, but also the green transition and biomanufacturing. So it realised that for decarbonisation, but also for the country’s strategic autonomy , these are important sectors”, she added.
And yet, “today, precisely in this highly complex geopolitical scenario – where we have had to wait for the war in Ukraine to realise that we were importing too much oil and gas from Russia and where we saw, with the war in Iran, our dependence on that region in terms of gas – we have the opportunity to innovate, to be competitive, and to use materials raw materials we have on our continent,” Bonaccorso pointed out. “This means using biomass, especially in the form of waste, residues, and by-products. This is a competitive advantage because we have the technology and the expertise,” even though “we are not so good at the industrialisation phase, “and this is the gap we need to bridge,” he warned. And we must do it together. “As a cluster, we represent Italy, but we are working on a very European scale: last year, we launched the EBCA cluster alliance, the European Bioeconomy Clusters Alliance – which started with 14 clusters and today we are more than 20,” Bonaccorso noted. “The idea is that, if we want to be competitive, we must think like Europeans. Therefore, we must overcome the fragmentation of 27 countries, find the things we have in common, and also have a common position to bring to the attention of the European Commission“, he explained.
An image from the Stakeholder Forum of the Circular Bio‑based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU). Source: EunewsItaly is also one of the main beneficiaries of investments in the bioeconomy promoted by the CBU JU, a 2-billion-euro partnership between the European Union and the private sector. Since 2014, Italian organisations have received a total of 157.09 million euros for 142 projects, of which 73 have already been completed. Such as EMBRACED, which has developed a technology to transform absorbent hygiene products, such as nappies and menstrual hygiene products, into bio-based materials, fertilisers, and bioplastics; TERRIFIC, which uses agro-industrial residues to produce packaging solutions; CIRCULAR BIOCARBON, which creates organic fertilisers and green graphene from municipal solid waste and sewage sludge to improve the efficiency of batteries and solar panels; or RUNFASTER4EU, which grows oilseed crops on marginal non-food land, helping to restore soil health whilst generating biomass. More generally, over the last decade, the circular bioeconomy sector has launched over 100 new bio-based products and more than 250 advanced materials.
