Mobilizing grants for bio-based innovations in the Central and Eastern European countries

2022-05-04

On the 28th of April 2022, Geonardo took part in an excellent webinar organized under the framework of the BIOEASTsUP Horizon2020 project. The event was hosted and moderated by Barna Kovács, Secretary-General of BIOEAST with the support of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture, the Institute of Agriculture Economics (AKI) in Hungary and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The webinar aimed to give information on the most recent research and innovation grants related to biomass production and processing.

Speakers from a variety of organizations and Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries gave presentations during the webinar.

Tomasz Calikowski, the Policy Officer at the European Commission DG RTD Circular Economy and Biobased Systems introduced Horizon Europe’s priorities and instruments for a European circular bioeconomy. He mentioned that a Bioeconomy Progress Report is expected to be published reporting on the progress of the implementation of the 2018 EU Bioeconomy Strategy, as well as the general progress of the bioeconomy in Europe soon this year.

Marco Rupp, responsible for public affairs and sustainability activities at the Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC) emphasized the importance of connecting industry, academia, regions and citizens to achieve the system level desired changes for the establishment of a successful bioeconomy.

Virginia Puzzolo, the Head of Program and Luisa Mascia, the Project Officer have put forward the newly formed Circular Bio-based Europe joint Undertaking (CBE JU) and shared their strategic research and innovation agenda.

Biljana Kulišić from the Energy Institute Hrvoje Pozar and Muriel Józó from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics both representing BIOEAST have concluded that the CEE region needs to implement the cascading use of biomass for bioactive compounds, biomaterials and bioenergy. In addition, they highlighted the need to expand existing bioenergy plants to small-scale biorefineries and to further develop strategic partnerships.

BioSPRINT, a Horizon 2020 project supported by BIC and the Bio-based Joint Undertaking (BBI JU) was introduced by Blaž Likozar from the National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia. The project aims to utilise and valorise hemicellulose, investigate intensified processing steps and technologies, achieve an integrated biorefinery concept that embodies the cascading principle and finally maximise the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass feedstocks into higher added-value products.

During the panel discussion, the bottlenecks of the current system were discussed and how they might be overcome along with possibilities for the CEE market actors already involved in local, national and regional networks such as the BIC. Overall, all participants agreed, that a circular bioeconomy is the way forward and that it will happen one way or another.