SusChem and ISC3 sign MoU to advance Sustainable Chemistry

The European Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry (SusChem) and the International Sustainable Chemistry Collaborative Centre (ISC3) signed a new cooperation agreement to foster their common mission of advancing Sustainable Chemistry at a European and global level at the recent SusChem board meeting on 14 March 2019 in Brussels.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) outlines the role of each organisation and proposes long-term collaboration in the following areas: research agenda development, fostering breakthrough Innovation, education & skills development and stakeholder dialogues on Sustainable Chemistry. Through this agreement, both parties aim to maximise the impact of relevant activities, build on synergies and complementarities, and create added value for their members.

Markus Steilemann, Chairman of the SusChem board (pictured above, left), said:

“The memorandum reflects the commitment of both sides to work together towards advancing sustainable chemistry innovation to address EU and global challenges. In the course of 2019, we look forward to collaborating on the new SusChem Strategic Research and Innovation agenda (SIRA), and on the ISC3-led ‘Global understanding of Sustainable Chemistry’ consultation. Here,  SusChem brings in the European perspective sharing the benefits of our SusChem network of National Technology platforms.”

Friedrich Barth, Managing Director of ISC3 (pictured above, right), said:

“We join forces with SusChem to promote sustainable innovation in the chemical sector, leveraging a multi-stakeholder approach that involves Academia, SMEs, start-ups, the large Industry and society. Working with SusChem means having on board such a European forum, building on existing knowledge and advancing Sustainable Chemistry, not only at a European level but at a global scale, which is our main mission.” 

A key 2019 priority of this agreement is the bilateral input on Research Agendas. 

The new SusChem Strategic Research and Innovation agenda (SIRA), is currently being revised and will be structured in line with the next EU research and innovation framework programme: Horizon Europe (HEU). The SusChem SIRA will also address the impact of Sustainable Chemistry on global challenges, as part of HEU, and therefore the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). ISC3 will provide input on all relevant technology priorities, and the potential impact of such innovation in Sustainable Chemistry with regards to global challenges. ISC3 will also provide key input on priorities under education and skills, a horizontal topic that will be covered in the new SusChem SIRA.

SusChem will provide input to the ISC3-led ‘Global understanding in Sustainable Chemistry’ consultation with a strong focus on Europe. SusChem will also involve the SusChem NTP network (17 countries) to provide a national perspective.

About SusChem

SusChem ETP, founded in 2004, is a European Technology Platform, with the main objective of contributing to revitalising research & innovation in Sustainable Chemistry and Industrial Biotechnology in Europe. As a multi-stakeholders networking forum and a technology solutions provider, SusChem works towards advising on technology priorities, at a European level, with a long-term strategic research and innovation agenda (SIRA). Connection to National priorities is achieved via its network of  National Technology platforms. SusChem engages, consults and brings together representatives from larger Industry, SMEs, Universities and research technology organisations – being open to the wider society. SusChem technology focus areas include:  Advanced Materials, Advanced Processes, Catalysis, enabling Digital technologies as well as Horizontal topics.

About ISC3

ISC3, founded in 2017, was established by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) and the German Environment Agency (UBA). ISC3 has a structure supported by a Research & Education Hub (Leuphana University, Lüneburg) and an Innovation Hub (DECHEMA, Frankfurt) with the aim to also establish regional hubs outside of Europe. It is a globally acting institution, a multi-stakeholder platform and think tank that engages with the private sector, civil society and politics to contribute to international chemicals policies and the formation of a global network for collaboration, innovation and education on Sustainable Chemistry. Activities to achieve such objectives are: dialogues amongst stakeholders, building on a global start-up service and funding, developing a Sustainable Chemistry curriculum, and also working towards a research agenda outlining a common understanding on Sustainable Chemistry, sustainability assessment and cross-sectorial topics.

Both platforms share the intent of contributing to a more sustainable world and a circular economy, and to the transformation of the chemical sector towards sustainable chemistry, responding to global challenges.

Horizon Europe on track: EU institutions reach political agreement

On Wednesday 20 March 2019, the European Council and Parliament reached a provisional agreement on Horizon Europe. This political agreement, under the current Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU, puts the EU institutions on track for a timely launch of Europe’s most ambitious Research and Innovation programme to date.

SusChem welcomes this political deal and fully supports the central role given to the innovative and enabling role of industry and sustainable chemistry in Horizon Europe.

Sustainable chemistry provides the building blocks for many of the Key Enabling Technologies and is a key solution provider for societal and UN sustainability goal challenges.

SusChem is committed to ensuring that Sustainable Chemistry technology priorities are fully considered in the ‘Global Challenges & European Industrial Competitiveness’ pillar of the new programme as well as the Public-Private-Partnership programmes and R&I Missions.

Dialogue and consultation with SusChem Stakeholders is already underway for the revision of technology priorities covered under the SusChem Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda (SIRA), which will serve as its input into Horizon Europe.

For a more detailed analysis of the deal please read this Science Business article.

Employment and Careers for Chemical Scientists in Europe

Did you know that the vast majority of chemical scientists work in research and innovation, with some three million jobs in chemistry across Europe? This and many more interesting facts on the chemical science workforce can be found in the results of the recent EuChemS Employment Survey.

Employment conditions and career opportunities were the focus of the new Employment Survey for European Chemists (ESEC2). Conditions and opportunities for chemists are individually analysed for all countries where a statistically significant number of responses were received.

The results provide important clues for careers in these countries and in Europe as a whole. The importance of the various employer sectors varies significantly between European countries. A full chapter of the report is devoted to career planning of students and new graduates. The survey provides a wealth of details about the chemistry workforce in Europe and its development.

You can access the EuChemS report here.

Choose LIFE!

Apply now for LIFE Funding! The LIFE programme is the EU’s funding instrument for the environment and climate action. LIFE contributes to the implementation, updating and development of EU environmental and climate policy and laws by co-financing projects with European added value. Since its creation in 1992, LIFE has been through a number of different funding periods. The current funding period 2014-2020 has a budget of EUR 3.4 billion and the 2019 LIFE Call for project proposals will be launched at the beginning of April and published on the LIFE Calls website.

To help potential project partners to prepare for the 2019 call the European Commission is organising an Information & Networking Day on the 2019 LIFE call for project proposals on 30 April in Brussels - #EULife19 - at the Charlemagne Building. The event is open to potential applicants presenting project proposals on green technology, nature protection and climate action and registration is open now.

Participants will be invited to a morning information session on the 2019 LIFE call, covering the significant changes to the programme compared to previous years.

The afternoon will be dedicated to networking with fellow participants to share experience, match with potential new partners and meet representatives of the LIFE programme from the European Commission.

The main topics in the 2019 call will cover:

• Environmental technologies and solutions including water, waste, air quality, soil, forest, health
• Climate change adaptation
• Climate change mitigation
• Nature conservation and biodiversity
• Climate and environmental governance and information initiatives

The agenda

The #EULife19 event will open with a review of the policy drivers of the LIFE programme led by Julien Guerrier, Director of EASME (the European Commission's Executive Agency for SMEs) before the 2019 programme call for action grants: priorities and novelties will be outlined.

There will be an opportunity for questions on the programme calls before a session on tips for a successful application.

After lunch an afternoon of  networking  and consortium building is foreseen with participants interested in applying for LIFE funding having the chance to find potential project partners or seek advice from EASME experts and National Contact Points in one-to-one meetings.

Why should you participate?

• To find and meet potential partners for your next LIFE project
• Take the chance to meet experts from the EASME)
• To get advice from LIFE National Contact Points

Register now! Registration is open until 25 April 2019.

The SusChem News Interview: Joanna Dupont-Inglis

SusChem was created with a mission to revitalise and inspire European chemistry and industrial biotechnology research, development and innovation in a sustainable way to respond to pressing societal challenges. Industrial biotechnology has always been a significant key enabling technology for SusChem and the Bioeconomy a priority policy area. And this continues as the platform works towards a new strategic innovation and research agenda for Horizon Europe.

EuropaBio was one of the founding partners of the platform. SusChem News recently caught up with Joanna Dupont-Inglis, Secretary-General of EuropaBio to get her views on SusChem’s achievements and what the future may hold for the platform.

Joanna has been a tremendous supporter of SusChem and its initiatives for many years and has recently stepped down from the SusChem board. Agnes Borg, EuropaBio's Director of Industrial Biotechnology, is now the organisation's representative on the SusChem management board.

Joanna has worked in Brussels for almost 20 years for a variety of industry groups, including CEFIC sector groups. A UK/Irish national with a background in Environmental Science and European Studies, she became directly involved with SusChem when she was appointed as Communications Manager with EuropaBio in 2009. Her role increased when she became Director of Industrial Biotech in April 2011. In 2016 Joanna was appointed as chair of the EU Bioeconomy Stakeholders Panel and since September 2018 Joanna has been EuropaBio’s Secretary General.

SN: How has SusChem been for you?

JDI: Being part of SusChem over the last ten years has been a great privilege, having given me the opportunity to work with experts, sometimes from quite different perspectives, who share a collective passion for the potential of chemistry and biotech.

The platform has grown and integrated a wider European community of industry, technology platforms and academia that is working to provide sustainable solutions to European challenges. SusChem successfully expanded the breadth and range of people involved in its work through its stakeholder engagement events encouraging cross-disciplinary work, helping to form consortia and reaching out along value chains to other organisations and initiatives. The network of SusChem National Technology Platforms, incorporating 17 countries across Europe, has been really significant  here too.

A big success for SusChem has also been its role to capture and articulate the benefits that sustainable chemistry and biotech to many of the major challenges facing our society and to global targets such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. It has done this by boosting awareness and visibility of research and innovation initiatives in sustainable biotech and chemistry.

SN: What do you see as the main ‘concrete’ achievements of the ETP?

JDI: The establishment of the SPIRE Public Private Partnership (SPIRE) and the BioBased Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI JU) are major achievements which SusChem helped work towards establishing. Many members of the SusChem board and the wider SusChem community were active and effective in advocating for the solutions and advantages that could be delivered via these two PPPs.

It’s really rewarding to see the hundreds of projects, focused on renewability, resource efficiency and climate change mitigation, that are now being delivered through these two initiatives and the valuable role of SusChem in helping to contribute to these two strategic research and innovation frameworks. The research and innovation outcomes from SPIRE and BBI are also demonstrating huge value-added potential for sustainable chemistry and industrial biotechnology by boosting jobs and growth in Europe while also ensuring environmental benefits.

The PPPs are helping Europe to remain at the cutting edge of technologies in these and other areas. They are bringing people together in new and novel partnerships and establishing links that continue beyond the projects themselves.

SN: How has SusChem influenced research and innovation activities in the EU working towards a functioning bioeconomy?

JDI: The impact and influence of SusChem’s research and innovation agendas are reflected throughout the European Commission’s Framework programmes FP7 and Horizon 2020.

SusChem’s research and innovation agendas have also been a major help here in laying the foundations of the bioeconomy by highlighting relevant technology priorities . SusChem has had a direct input through its own ‘SusChem inspired’ projects in FP7 and Horizon 2020 and also in its influence in supporting the agenda for the BBI’s work programme.

It’s work on sustainable chemistry applications, in topics such as renewable feedstock, holds great potential for benefiting rural and coastal communities through the development of their local and regional bioeconomy in terms of jobs and growth.

SusChem has also been impactful in advocating the link between resource efficiency and the bioeconomy, providing the basis for synergies with the circular economy.

SN: How do you see the platform’s role developing in Horizon Europe?

JDI: The new SusChem’s SIRA, to be published in light of Horizon Europe, will be really important here.  On a personal level, I’m excited to see how in the future SusChem will change the perception of CO2 and CH4 from being ‘’problem GHGs’’ to valuable feedstocks. Although the exact nature and functioning of Horizon Europe’s missions are still to be clarified, their raison d’etre is to use research and innovation to deliver tangible benefits that citizens are looking for to provide a healthier, more sustainable future for them and generations to come. Consumers are becoming more and more engaged in sustainability issues and, therefore, in what they buy and use. SusChem could have a role here through engaging with the public to showcase what can be achieved; demonstrating the options and impact that sustainable chemistry and industrial biotechnology can deliver.

The platform also has a role in encouraging academia to provide the courses and resources to ensure we are giving people the right skills and knowledge to enable a more sustainable society.

SusChem is very well placed, thanks to its collective expertise, to contribute to these missions. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how many of the proposed missions could succeed without input from biotech and sustainable chemistry. SusChem can deliver on these urgent needs and will continue to play a key role in the movement to ensure society uses our natural resources as sustainability as possible going forward for the benefit of everyone.

Data in Materials and Manufacturing

The impact and opportunities associated with digital technologies in the chemical and other process industries is an area of increasing importance for both SusChem and SPIRE. SusChem has already put the spotlight on digital technologies. Sustainable chemistry acts as an enabler for the continuous development of smarter and more sustainable electronic devices and equipment in other industries, while also being transformed and disrupted through digitalisation. This later topic was a major theme at the 2019 EU Industry Day event on 5 and 6 February where SusChem participated.

The European Commission’s EU Industry Days 2019 focused on key industrial challenges such as sustainability, digitalisation, investment and globalisation. The event demonstrated how EU industrial policy benefits European citizens and provided input for future policy making.

Martin Winter, Innovation Manager at Cefic and the lead contact for digital technologies for both SusChem and SPIRE was part of a panel discussion on ‘Data in Materials and Manufacturing’ on the second day of the event. 

There is a real opportunity to leverage the immense capabilities of information and communication technologies (ICT) to optimise processes and improve production efficiency within the chemical and process industries. Martin initially explained how data technologies including blockchain and artificial intelligence will become important for recycling and reuse of materials within the process industries to enable a more circular economy. 

3D-printed catalytic reactors

As an example of the potential impact of digital technologies in the chemical sector he described the SPIRE Horizon 2020 project ‘PRINTCR3DIT’. “This is the first EU-funded initiative on modelling the effect of 3D-printing technologies for both reactor and catalyst design in the chemical industries,” said Martin Winter. The project is part of a significant portfolio of digital technology projects managed by the SPIRE cPPP. 

He also emphasised the essential role of Public-Private-Partnerships (cPPPs) like SPIRE or Big Data Value PPP in bringing the relevant data-related innovation ecosystems together and accelerating the uptake of technologies from research into use in industry. Martin Winter presented the substantial portfolio of digital projects within SPIRE and emphasised the need for new digital skills for chemists and engineers working in the new digital era. 

Other speakers in the session highlighted the enormous opportunities that integrated data management could yield together with the barriers that are currently inhibiting their full exploitation. Interoperability was a major issue and much of the discussion centred around ontology – the formal naming and categorisation of data sets – as a key area of work to enable data transfer.

Martin Winter noted some issues in terms of value creation through advanced data analytics. In process industries better data availability, data storage, cybersecurity and advanced data analytics are becoming very important. He also called for a co-creation process to accelerate progress.

There is a need to fully leverage synergies between cPPPs. “SPIRE, Big Data Value and Cybersecurity PPPs must work together here,” he said. “If Europe is lagging behind in this area, it is very important that we avoid any possibility of duplication of work.”

SPIRE moves to build new R&I road map with new structure

On Monday 4 February the SPIRE PPP celebrated five years of hard work in which it has seen the launch of 89 projects with a combined budget of some EUR 900 million. The A.SPIRE General Assembly meeting elected Pierre Joris, a board member of a number of international process and chemical companies and previously a senior manager at Solvay, as the new Chairman of the SPIRE Board. Pierre takes over from Daniel Gauthier who had completed his two-year term as Chair. Pierre (right) and Daniel (left) are pictured below with SPIRE Executive Director Angels Orduña at the SPIRE celebration.

At the General Assembly SPIRE announced a range of changes required to translate its SPIRE 2050 Vision, released towards the end of 2018, into concrete research and innovation proposals through the development and publication of a SPIRE 2050 research and innovation road map.

The SPIRE 2050 Vision has been strongly endorsed by SPIRE members, stakeholders and the PPP’s partners at the European Commission and SPIRE now aims to have a solid plan to achieve the implementation of this ambitious vision through the forthcoming Horizon Europe programme and beyond.

The process of building the road map is now beginning and will kick-off officially in March with the aim of achieving a first draft during the Summer and finalising the document by November 2019.

SusChem will contribute to the formulation of the road map through work on its own new Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda, in particular in areas such as process technologies, industrial symbiosis and digitalisation, where SPIRE calls could be a channel to the realisation of projects.

New working groups

In order to facilitate the development of the new road map the A.SPIRE Board of Directors and its Industrial Research and Innovation Advisory Group (IRIAG) has initiated the setting up of seven new SPIRE Working Groups (WGs).

The seven working groups are:

• G1 - Energy Mix
• G2 - Electrification of Industrial Processes
• G3 - Use of Hydrogen
• G4 - Capture and Use of CO2
• G5 - Resource and Process Efficiency (and Flexibility)
• G6 - Industrial and Urban Symbiosis
• G7 – Digital (This WG was already established in autumn 2018)

The current SPIRE WGs (FEED, WASTE, PROCESS and APPLICATIONS.) will no longer be active, however the Advocacy group (aka the Outreach group) will be (re)activated.

A Steering Group will provide strategic guidance and manage the structure of the road map to ensure coherence with SPIRE 2050 Vision. In addition, a consulting company will be selected by A.SPIRE in early 2019 to support the WGs in the formulation of the road map.

WG members required

To populate the new Working Groups, SPIRE is calling for experts from its member organisations to get involved! Two types of expert input are required:

• Technical Experts to provide expertise in the topics addressed by the WGs. In addition, expertise in supply-chain structures and in the upstream and/or downstream related sectors is needed, in order to ensure an integrated approach and consider the wider trends and developments on related EU policies (e.g. Industry, Climate Change and Circular Economy).
• Specialists to provide strategic guidance and input, e.g. experts from companies or research organisations that hold positions to lead implementation strategies in the WG topic.

The new road map will provide an outlook up to 2050, divided into two parts: firstly, a more detailed part that will look into the investments required to reach market deployment within the time line of Horizon Europe, and then up to 2030; and secondly, a less detailed part that presents the plans of the process industries up to 2050.

After the road map exercise, the SPIRE WGs will remain active for the development of the Work Programmes under Horizon Europe.

Five year perspective

At the SPIRE celebration, the former Chair of A.SPIRE, Dr Klaus Sommer, delivered a video presentation outlining the origins of SPIRE, what the PPP has been achieved so far and what the future holds.