E4Water report demonstrates EU Chemical Industry's water eco-efficiency

Today (18 October 2016), the results of the 'SusChem inspired' E4Water project - a ground-breaking water sustainability initiative - were presented by Cefic during a joint task force meeting with the European Commission in Madrid. The project, which was sponsored jointly by the European Commission under the FP7 Research Framework programme and industry stakeholders, produced real-world outcomes in industrial contexts where companies used less energy, less freshwater, and produced less waste water.

Designed to give a major boost to the water efficiency of the European chemical industry, the E4Water project aimed to demonstrate the benefits of integrated, cost and energy efficient water management. Including 19 partners across nine EU countries, and with six pilot sites the total project investment was € 19 million and the project ran from 2012 to 2016.

“Although the European chemical industry is a standard-bearer for eco-friendly measures like cutting greenhouse gas and increasing energy efficiency, this project identifies important new potential for increased water efficiency. This not only helps safeguard the planet by saving water and energy but also costs for industry”, said William Garcia, Cefic Executive Director. “We hope to see the model this project demonstrates scaled up in other industries to make important gains for the climate.”

Pilot examples
Six pilot cases were conducted to demonstrate what is possible if the recommendations from this project are taken up by other industry stakeholders and integrated into their processes. The potential benefits shown in the pilot studies included:

• Reduction of 3 million m3 of freshwater per year
• Reduction of 2.5 million m3 of produced wastewater per year
• Reduced wastewater discharge by 4 million m3 per year
• Reduced resource use through more efficient processes
• 20% less energy used by implementing low energy technology
• A drop in operating expenditure of 30% for every m3 of saved freshwater/year
• Eliminating need for incineration (5,000 tonnes/annum/plant)

More information on the project and its outcomes can be found in the E4Water brochure with a more detailed report available on the project's website.

Water efficiency is a huge part of tackling climate change. The EU chemical industry – Europe’s fifth largest manufacturing sector – relies on water for many industrial processes. For example, processing, washing, heating, cooling and transporting products. To cut the amount of water required for these processes, the E4 Water project applied new research and development concepts to boost its eco-efficiency and sustainability.

Background
The ‘Economically and Ecologically Efficient Water Management in the European Chemical Industry’ (E4Water) project addressed crucial process industry needs to overcome bottlenecks and barriers for an integrated and energy efficient water management. The main objective was to enable more efficient and sustainable management of water in chemical industry sector and identify possibilities to share the models developed with other industrial sectors.

The E4Water project consortium united large chemical industries, leading European water sector companies and innovative RTD centres and universities active in the area of water management with and collaborators from national and regional water authorities. The project received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

Register now for 18th Annual LRI Workshop!

The 18th Annual Cefic-LRI Workshop will take place in Brussels from 16-17 November 2016. The event is organised by the Long-Range Research Initiative Programme (LRI) of the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic) and it's main focus this year will be on ‘AOPs (Adverse Outcome Pathways) and Genomics: how useful, how to address risk, and where next?’

The event kicks off on the evening of Wednesday 16 November 2016 at the Le Plaza Hotel with an invited poster session and networking cocktail followed by the Workshop Dinner and the 2016 LRI Innovative Science Award ceremony.

This evening session will be chaired by Nicolas Cudre-Mauroux from Solvay Award. He will introduce 2015 LRI award winner Dr Alice Limonciel of Innsbruck Medical University who will present the results of her study to establish thresholds of activation for stress response pathways and ligand-activated receptors for chemical classification.

This will be followed by the presentation of the €100,000 2016 LRI Innovative Science Award to the winning research concept who will outline the work they intend to undertake thanks to the award funding.

On Thursday, 17 November the workshop venue will be The Square in Brussels. This main workshop session will consist of a morning plenary session covering the impact of LRI research in the following key project areas:

• Environmental methodology of mixtures and residues
• Grouping of nanomaterials
• Dust and workers exposure
• Dermal absorption modelling
• Eye irritation alternatives
• Epidemiological evidence of Endocrine Disruption
• Epigenetics normality

After Lunch a thematic panel discussion on ‘AOP and Genomics: how useful, how to address risk, and where next?’ will be chaired and moderated by Prof Ian Kimber of the University of Manchester.

You can download the programme for the event here and registration is now open and free!

#useCO2: Economics and Valorisation

Carbon Dioxide Utilisation (CDU) is a topic of growing interest around the world and as reported earlier a CO2 Forum panel on 'Impacts, Policies and Strategies of CDU' took place on September 15 in conjunction with the four-day International Conference on Carbon Dioxide Utilisation (ICCDU) in Sheffield, UK.  The ICCDU is now organised as an annual event in response to the growing interest CDU in the academic community. ICCDU 2017 will take place in Shanghai. The CO2 Forum enjoyed a high level of representation from industry with presentations and participation in the debates from companies including Covestro, Carbon8, Total, 3M, and Sunfire.

The high level of debate was reinforced by the presence of delegates from the IEA and IASS Postdam. In addition several partners from the SusChem supported SCOT project were also present and discussed the conclusions and recommendations of their project.

This year, the CO2 Forum was truly international with the participation of a some US delegates sharing views and highlighting additional and currently less known up scaling projects such as Skyonic in the US and CarbFix in Iceland.

CDU (or #useCO2) approaches are a medium to long-term research and innovation priority of SusChem and are featured in the SusChem Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda (SIRA). SusChem inspired #useCO2 calls have been included in Horizon 2020 work programmes including those developed through the SPIRE PPP such as SPIRE calls 05-2016 and 08-2017.

Economic issues
Although more #useCO2 projects are being announced, the economics of CO2 valorisation remains a significant issue in the current conditions. More incentives and support schemes are needed to support technology development and demonstration of CDU technologies at the large scale.

Pierre Barthelemy, Executive Director Research and Innovation at Cefic participated in a panel debate at the CO2 Forum and highlighted the need for support across all Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), in particular financial support is needed beyond TRL 7 (defined as 'system prototype demonstration in operational environment' under Horizon 2020). He also called for an appropriate regulatory framework that supports #useCO2 business cases.

Inevitably the discussion at the CO2 Forum also included the potential for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), however the slow development of this technology was highlighted. By 2025, CCS projects currently in the pipeline could capture only 10% of what is required to support the two degree scenario (2DS) discussed at COP21 in Paris. Clearly no technological option should be rejected and more innovation is needed to meet the challenge of climate change.

Club CO2 seminar

The technical and economic issues around #useCO2 projects will also be the subject of the second CO2 reuse seminar organised by ClubCO2 with the support of ADEME and the CO2Forum. This event takes place on 21 October 2016 in Lyon, France and will focus on the question: What are the economic and environmental benefits of CO2 reuse? The first ClubCO2 seminar was organised in Le Havre in May 2015, Club CO2.

The morning session (to be conducted in English) will present the current position and prospects for the policy-making, regulatory and economic aspects of CO2 reuse and analyses of the economic and environmental benefits of different CO2 conversion processes, based on industrial applications.

The afternoon parallel expert sessions will be organised in English and French speaking workshops with the aim of discussing and highlighting the conditions for the successful emergence of CO2 transformation technologies.

You can find more information about the Club CO2 seminar here and registration for the event can be found here.

The ADEME (French Environment and Energy Management Agency) founded Club CO2 in 2002 with the support of the IFP Energies Nouvelles (IFPEN - formerly French Petroleum Institute) and BRGM (Bureau of Geological and Mineral Research). Since 19 March 2016, Club CO2 has been a non-profit association registered under French law to bring together industry and research organisations in this area.

Sustainable chemistry at Industrial Technologies 2016

Sustainable chemistry will be featuring in two sessions at the European Conference Industrial Technologies 2016 hosted by the Netherlands Presidency of the European Union from 22 to 24 June 2016. The event will take place at the RAI Conference Centre in Amsterdam with the overarching theme: Creating a Smart Europe.

Industrial Technologies 2016 will be the largest networking conference in the field of new production technologies, materials, nanotechnology, biotechnology and digital technologies in Europe this year with more than 1 250 high level delegates expected. And with more than 100 influential speakers giving presentations, lectures and workshops, delegates will learn how to push the boundaries of new technologies to make businesses smarter and more successful.

SusChem sessions
Two sessions on the afternoon of 22 June under the 'Fostering smart and sustainable growth' strand will be of particular interest to SusChem stakeholders. The first session is ‘Innovation Inside: Circular Economy in the Chemical Industry’ and runs from 13:30 to 15:00.

Sustainable chemical innovation is key in the transition into a Circular Economy and is a key topic of debate at the 2016 SusChem Stakeholder event. The chemical industry and its partners in academia, research and technology organisations are involved in, and have completed a number of SusChem-inspired European funded projects with the objective to advance into a circular economy by accelerating the development of low Technology Readiness Level (TRL) ideas into industrial pilot and semi-commercial level.

The session will be moderated by Marco Mensink, Director General European Chemical Industry Council and will include a contributions by SusChem board Chairman and SPIRE president Klaus Sommer of Bayer Technology Services, Stefan Krämer of INEOS Köln, Gloria Gaupmann from Clariant, Christoph Gürtler of Covestro, Peter Aerts from Dow Water and Process Solutions, and Thierry Collard from Solvay Chemicals.

How to produce more using fewer resources?  How to save materials through new manufacturing approaches and how to minimise energy consumption during manufacturing. This requires new design approaches coupled with new, material saving production processes with improved material efficiency and enabling the (flexible) use of substitute materials.

The panel will discuss examples of recently completed projects and specifically discuss the learning and successes in terms of the transition to a circular economy by innovation, adoption and implementation of new technologies. The panel will also address energy, water and resource efficiencies achieved by a combination of innovation and effective use of data and digitalisation. As the final point the panel plans to address the importance of adopting integration of management systems and industrial symbiosis to achieve the next level of breakthrough.

Biotech
Immediately after the coffee break the sustainable chemistry theme will continue on 22 June with the session entitled ‘Industrial biotechnology for sustainable and efficient manufacturing’ from 15:30 to 16:30.

Major challenges in the biobased industries concern developing and valorising new feedstock resources, including wastes, residues, non-food biomass sources, and multiple feedstock sources, while improving the yield, productivity and robustness of bioconversions processes. In addition the industry must achieve constant high quality in biobased products, feedstock and bioconversion processes, improve efficiencies in scaling-up through predictive scale-up models, and develop integrated bioconversion processes.

The session chair will be SusChem board member: Joanna Dupont from EuropaBio with contributions from Mika Härkönen of VTT, Jelle Ernst Oude Lenferink from Fluor and Ana Palanca of AIMPLAS.

Creating a Smart Europe
The three day conference brings together personalities involved in research, industry, education, finance and policy activities from  manufacturing and process industry and technology domains from all over Europe to identify priorities that are crucial to strengthen the European industrial innovation ecosystem and deliver ‘A Smart Europe’.

The Industrial Technologies 2016 conference offers a full three day programme including plenary sessions, parallel lectures and workshops, matchmaking for collaborative ventures, and visits to Dutch companies that are in the lead of Smart Industry developments plus much, much more.

You can download an overview with all the activities at Industrial Technologies 2016 here.

Follow Industrial Technologies 2016 on twitter.

EIC is an Opportunity to Strengthen Innovation Framework

Cefic submitted a position statement and participated in the recent European Commission consultation call “Designing a European Innovation Council: A Call for Ideas”.  Cefic thinks that the European Commission initiative to create a European Innovation Council (EIC) provides an opportunity to strengthen the overall framework for innovation in Europe and that the EIC should be tasked with designing and supporting the implementation of a coherent innovation strategy with a clear impact on instruments, funding schemes, policies and regulations.

You can download and read the full Cefic position paper here.

Cefic believes that the overarching goal of the EIC should be to improve the framework conditions needed to stimulate an optimal and faster market uptake of innovations. The key priorities for the EIC should be to:

• Optimise and simplify the instruments and funding schemes related to innovation in the European Union,
• Improve the coordination of policies that impact innovation
• Become the driving force to realise the objectives of the Innovation Principle, and 
• Reinforce the perception of the benefits of innovation for the whole of European society. 

“Cefic welcomes all initiatives that can strengthen, simplify and increase the efficiency of the European framework for innovation,” said Dr Pierre Barthelemy, Executive Director of Research and Innovation at Cefic.

The EIC, as a high level advisory instrument, should have a clear value-creating role that safeguards a balanced innovation landscape, considering all stakeholders in the innovation chain (from research institutions up to both large and small private companies) and all sectors that are vital to the competitiveness of the European economy including the process industries, discrete manufacturing, ICT, and transport.

EIC proposal
The European Commission launched a public consultation to gather ideas for a European Innovation Council to support Europe's most promising innovators on 16 February and the call closed on 29 April 2016.

Positive steps have been taken in recent years to integrate an innovation component into EU programmes and policies, in particular Horizon 2020. However, the array of support mechanisms can be difficult to navigate, and lacks the flexibility and responsiveness that disruptive innovation requires.

Launching the call Commissioner Moedas (left) said that "Europe has excellent science, but we lack disruptive market-creating innovation. This is what is needed to turn our best ideas into new jobs, businesses and opportunities." While the number of start-ups created in Europe is on a par with competitors such as the United States, Europe lags behind in disruptive innovation and in scaling start-ups into world-beating businesses. A European Innovation Council could contribute to solving this problem.

More than 1000 replies and 170 supporting documents were submitted in response to the European Commission's call for ideas and a first analysis shows that over 80% of respondents agree or strongly agree that the lack of disruptive market-creating innovation is an obstacle to growth in Europe. Many commented that although there is a wealth of good ideas and skilled people and many promising start-ups, companies are struggling to scale up.

Introducing Henk Pool

Cefic Research and Innovation has recently recruited two Innovation Managers who will be heavily involved with SusChem activities over the next few years. Some members of the SusChem community will have met Anne Chloe Devic and Henk Pool prior to their secondment to Cefic and as they took up their duties for SusChem over the past few months. All stakeholders will have the opportunity to meet them at the 2016 SusChem Stakeholder event.

In two articles we are introducing both managers and asking them about what they are expecting to achieve for Sustainable Chemistry in Europe during their time with our platform. Today we talk to Henk Pool. 

Career highlights
After completing a Master’s degree in engineering degree at Twente University of Technology in The Netherlands, Henk Pool joined Dow Chemical’s R&D facilities at Terneuzen in The Netherlands in the late 80’s. Pool’s first industrial activities were application development with customers in the field of Styrene Polymers. He became a group leader for Dow’s Polystyrene (PS) R&D Team in Europe four years later. In this role Henk Pool joined Dow’s European business team for PS and Dow’s global PS technology team, travelled the (Dow) world and was directly responsible for a number of key research projects in Dow’s PS business portfolio.

In the very late 90’s Henk changed the direction of his career and joined Dow’s Corporate Six Sigma team at Dow’s Headquarters in Midland in Michigan USA for almost six years. Returning to the Dow facility in Terneuzen, he became responsible for the R&D finance and operations of one of Dow’s major business portfolios. By late 2008 the role of Director for the Terneuzen R&D laboratories had been added to his responsibilities. In 2010, Henk Pool also became Director of the R&D centre for Dow at the brand new King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. He joined Cefic R&I department as an Innovation Manager in February 2016.

Henk Pool spends his free time between his family, sports (including cycling and running), home and garden improvement projects.

What is your view on Sustainable Chemistry? 
Sustainable Chemistry enables better use of available resources. Better use at each and every step in the value chain between feedstock materials and customers, like you and me, who are continuously using chemistry enabled products. As a matter of fact, sustainable chemistry does not stop there, but rather continues with post-product life reuse and recycle of products and materials. Sustainable chemistry helps improve our life, reduces our environmental footprint and addresses key societal challenges. For instance in energy and climate change chemistry is a key enabler in the development of wind and solar as alternative energy sources.

Too often I hear biobased products suggested as the only sustainable option. In my definition of Sustainable Chemistry biobased materials do not replace, but rather complement fossil-based materials.

What challenges do you foresee?
Continuing our current lifestyle and the pace of living by 2030 we would need approximately 30% more water, 40% more energy and 50% more food. This is clearly not sustainable and is a point on which, I hope, we can all agree. When we talk in terms of solutions, we mostly point at what others can or should do.

But what can “I” do in terms of sustainability and circular economy? The answer is relatively simple, more than you think and collectively more than we thought we could achieve. Sustainable Chemicals play an important role in all of this by enhancing properties, reducing environmental footprint and enabling our competitive position.

There are many key technological challenges ahead but we must be guided by the fact that sustainability is not an alternative, but the way to enhance our position and competitiveness. Eco-design should be the start of any new innovation project – we should always start with sustainability in the front of our mind.

How do you see your new role contributing to your view on Sustainable Chemistry?  
One of my responsibilities is a key and increasingly scarce resource: water. The chemical industry is both a user of water and also an important solution provider of innovative products, technologies and services which can enable more sustainable water management. Innovation is driving water use, enabling water reuse and enhancing water quality. SusChem inspired projects like E4Water are demonstrating at industry scale our ability to decouple economic activity and water consumption by closing water loops and enabling reuse of water in the chemical industry. I see an aspect of my role is disseminating these results, identifying barriers for implementation, defining opportunities and creating innovation momentum for much broader implementation across our and other sectors including EU policy development to support uptake.

What do you hope to achieve by the end of your three years at Cefic?
With the research and innovation team at Cefic I hope to further increase the involvement of the chemical industry in collaborative innovation projects. Collaborations between academia, RTOs, institutes and industry with the objective to share experiences, complement knowledge and accelerate development and implementation of potential “game changers” I terms of competitiveness and sustainability.

In particular I look forward to contributing to the new SusChem inspired project Veram. This unique project involves five European Technology Platforms (ETPs) working together to define a 2030 vision and 2050 roadmap for research and innovation programs in raw and precious materials.

What areas are you looking to collaborate with others and how do you prefer to be contacted?
I will be dealing with several aspects of the SusChem Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda (SIRA), including water and (critical) raw materials. I am looking at closely networking with experts in the industry, representing their needs and working with them on some valuable and important collaborative innovation programmes.

You can contact Henk Pool via email.

Introducing Anne Chloe Devic

Cefic Research and Innovation has recently recruited two new Innovation Managers who will be heavily involved with SusChem activities over the next few years. Some members of the SusChem community will have met Anne Chloe Devic and Henk Pool prior to their secondment to Cefic and as they took up their duties for SusChem over the past few months. All stakeholders will have the opportunity to meet them at the 2016 SusChem Stakeholder event.

In this and a subsequent article we introduce both managers and ask them about what they are expecting to achieve for Sustainable Chemistry in Europe during their time with the platform. Today we talk to Anne Chloe Devic.

Career highlights
Following two years of “Classes Preparatoires” in France, Anne Chloe got a Master’s degree in Chemistry and Chemical engineering specialising in Polymers from the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Chimie in Montpellier, France. She then started a professional ‘tour of Europe’ with a job at ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) in the UK working as a research engineer in acrylic composites. Anne Chloe then moved to France where she managed a laboratory and process support team for the production of alkoxylates for surfactants before moving to a plant producing PMMA cast sheets where she was deputy site manager looking after quality, SHE and process. Her next country was Belgium and, still with ICI, she managed a team looking after all scale-up activities for their Polyurethane business which was subsequently purchased by Huntsman. She continued her tour of Europe with a move to Spain in 2002 were she worked as technology advisor in research and innovation for materials at Repsol based in Madrid. In that job, Anne Chloe got involved with the SusChem Spain board and the materials working group of SusChem Europe. She also got the chance to sit on the IRIAG (Industry Research and Innovation Advisory Group) and the partnership board of the SPIRE association – experiences that means she has absolutely the right profile for the job of Innovation Manager at CEFIC!

In her free time Anne Chloe is a keen sportswoman, enjoys travelling every year to visit her family in India, and she has a special interest in innovation in politics – for example new governance systems.

What is your view on Sustainable Chemistry?
Sustainability in developing chemistry solutions for societal challenges is not only about assessing and reducing the environmental impact of a process or a product. It is also about developing in parallel an added value for the customer. Sustainability is also about the life of a chemical product which needs to further reduce its different footprints in its use and its ability to be recycled. Sustainability of chemicals is also about positive impact on people’s health and well-being. For example, I see 3D printable prosthetics as the solution and best example of sustainable chemistry for easy access of these devices to a much larger number of disabled people – more than we could ever dream off just 10 years ago. Here there is triple sustainability: it is about the renewable biopolymer used for 3D printing, it is the lower price enabling increasing access, and the added value by enabling full adaptation to the individual human body.

What challenges do you foresee?
We will not win the battle for competitiveness, which is crucial for the European Chemical industry, if we don’t offer Sustainable Chemicals which have significantly enhanced properties compared to existing products. The market needs to see sustainability and added value together, which is a very big technological challenge for the years to come. The answer will be the use of eco-design of materials. However the methodology of eco-design needs to be standardised and systematised in all research and innovation organizations.

Another challenge is to get the messages through to the public that sustainability is not only about use of alternative feedstocks for products, like biomass for “bio-products”. It is also about, for example, using CO₂ and by-products from effluents to convert to useful products.

How do you see your new role contributing to your view on Sustainable Chemistry?
My new role will hopefully enable companies that we (CEFIC) represent to do more Research and Innovation, helping the Horizon 2020 programme and other instruments to better respond to the industrial challenges we face and to find the right multi-disciplinary collaborations across countries, academics and companies that will enable customers and society in general to have a better life, in a more reasonable world run under a sharing and more resource, energy and CO₂ efficient economy - the circular economy.

What do you hope to achieve by the end of your three years at Cefic?
I hope I will have contributed, together with my colleagues in the innovation team at CEFIC, to spread the innovation challenges messages of the chemical industry, as an intermediate and coordinator, so that the public, the companies, the Research and Technology Organisations, and the European Institutions have a better understanding of how Innovation in sustainable chemicals and materials can be placed in the right context in terms of policy and technology. And how they can be potential game changers for Europe. To be more precise I hope that the achievement will be: Compared to three years before, we can seeing more involvement in collaborative projects with a measurable impact and more innovative products close to the market from the European chemical industry.

What areas are you looking to collaborate with others and how do you prefer to be contacted?
I will be dealing with the area of Sustainable Materials and I am looking to gather experts from industry and research organisations in order to draw together the research and innovation challenges of the future – specifically Materials in the Circular Economy and Energy Union issues. We will also establish and confirm the current priorities within the review of the SusChem Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda (SIRA). I can be contacted for any proposed contribution you may have.

I am also coordinating the SusChem National Technology Platforms (NTPs) and will be looking to increase the number of NTPs - any organisation interested I setting up a new NTP can contact me - and how we can improve the existing network of 13 countries, exchanging real value between the European and national platforms.

You can contact Anne Chloe by email.

Sustainable Circular Economy: an idea to steal

Following the increasing interest and discussion about the Circular Economy Strategy that was recently launched by the European Commission a workshop entitled “The Sustainable Circular Economy – new opportunities for raw materials, chemicals and water?" was organised by Cefic, ERRIN and the East & North Finland region on Tuesday 15 March 2016. The event took place in Brussels and brought together different contributions to answer questions relating to the new opportunities provided by raw materials and industrial symbiosis, and regional support for innovation and competitiveness. The workshop also focused on EU policy and the role of research and innovation to enable a more sustainable circular economy. 

According to Grwegorz Radziejewski from Commissioner Jyrki Katainen’s cabinet: “The circular economy brings a win-win scenario, as it reduces waste and the use of the resources.  It represents an opportunity to the European economy to modernise itself and to enhance competitiveness.”

The proposed EU package will stimulate Europe's transition towards a circular economy, which will bring benefits for both the environment and the economy, providing sustainable solutions for (and from) the chemicals sector. The European proposal carries profound changes for innovation and investments, especially on waste management and recycling. Radziejewski also emphasised that the circular economy strategy will change the way products are designed, produced and consumed, bringing empowerment and knowledge to consumers.

“Diversification of chemical feedstock and better sustainability are essential to bring ecological alternatives to the chemicals sector,” highlighted Reinhard Buescher from the European Commission’s DG GROWTH. This means a better and wide use of sustainable oil and natural gas, sustainable minerals and biomass, recycled plastics, and the re-use of sustainable CO2. In terms of chemical production, it is important to invest in better worker security measures, environmental protection, resource efficiency, CO2 reduction, and innovation. “We need to achieve innovation thought new forms of symbioses, production and use of resources, for example, by replacing some substances for others that reduce the impact on water, air and soil,” explained Buescher. Once again, the importance of consumer information was reinforced, as well as the need to define quality standards for recycling plastics, better waste collection and sorting criteria, and the creation of new markets for secondary raw materials.

For 2016-2017, Europe can expect the launch of the European Sustainable Chemicals Service Centre, the adoption of the Fertilizer Regulation, a mapping of standards in support of sustainable chemicals, the adoption of a new Plastic Strategy (with DG ENV), among other initiatives.

Industry perspective
From the chemical industry perspective, the integration of sustainability, innovation and technology are fundamental to the development of a circular economy, which cannot be achieved only through regulations and business standards. Advanced technologies are fundamental to ensure better use of resources, new methods of production and recycling alternatives, in order to increase competitiveness in the global market. The role of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), such as SPIRE, can be emphasised here in the creation of new synergies and solutions along the various value chains, innovation networks, industrial and geographical sectors of the European economy.

Taking in consideration the growing world demand for chemicals and also the increasing volume of production and exports of chemicals and plastics by the United States and China, as competitors and leading countries in trade and innovation, Hartwing Wendt, Cefic’s Executive Director of Sustainability (pictured speaking above), stressed some of the key drivers impacting the relative decline of Europe’s chemical industry.

The European sector suffers from a feedstock disadvantage, reduced local demand from EU manufacturing industry, and changes in specific sectors that have effectively moved out of Europe (textiles and electronics, for example). In general, these drivers require the development of new products and business models. Besides that, there is a societal pressure to reduce the carbon intensity of feedstock and commodities. In this scenario, the circular economy seems the best option to deal with these challenges, and one good example could be the use of CO2 as an alternative carbon source.

Water not waste
A general consensus from the workshop related to the need to reduce waste and transform it into a source of raw material. Several Horizon 2020 projects were cited as answers, for example, to waste in the water sector and to energy efficiency demand including: Resyntex, Maslowaten, and Cyto-water.

For Violeta Kuzmickaite, from the WssTP technology platform, water is the most commonly used solvent on this planet. “Water is not a waste, but a raw material. Water is already circular,” she claimed showing its importance to establishing a sustainable circular economy.

An Urban Water Agenda 2030, presented by Pieter de Jong, on behalf of Wetsus – the European Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology, is based on four main challenges:

• Water quality
• Scarcity
• Floods, and
• Financing of infrastructure.

The agenda covers water efficiency, nutrient recovery, and water reuse, and has inspired the development of some projects: Hydrowashr, for the minimum water use for hand washing, and Value from Urine, for ammonia recovery.

Circular regions
The workshop also presented case studies on new businesses and opportunities provided by raw materials and industrial symbiosis.  Lapland region, for example, has potential to become one of the leading regions in the world in the sustainable exploitation of natural resources. This part of Finland has benefited from large investment in mining and it is focused on refining Arctic natural resources in a socially and ecologically sustainable manner, combined with high value added.

Castilla y Leon, in Spain, is another god example of regional strategy for circular economy and green jobs, involving government, universities, social agents and clusters. The region has introduced alternatives and new sustainable extraction and process technologies for mining bringing new markets, growth and jobs.

Finally, the Dutch region of Fryslân is another case of biobased and circular economy development: an example of what has been done in this region comes from the concrete industry, which now employs down-cycling rather than recycling.

All the presentations made at the workshop can be accessed here.

Green and Sustainable Chemistry Conference in Berlin

The inaugural Green and Sustainable Chemistry Conference will take place in Berlin on 3 to 6 April. SusChem board member Prof Klaus Kümmerer, Director of the Institute for Sustainable and Environmental Chemistry at Leuphana University Lüneburg (pictured below) is the chair of the conference organising committee and will be giving an opening address and one of the keynote lectures on green and sustainable products. Fellow SusChem board member Dr Pierre Barthelemy, Executive Director of R&I at Cefic, will also contribute to the session on Context.

The conference will open with a high-level session as part of a comprehensive and wide-ranging programme that features keynote and invited speakers supplemented by more than 75 other presentations and an extensive poster session. Paul Anastas, Director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University and often referred to as the ‘Father of Green Chemistry’ will give the opening keynote lecture.

As the world’s population edges towards nine billion, the strain on the planet’s resources is steadily increasing. In both the developed and developing world there is a growing demand for food, manufactured goods and improved access to clean water and fuel. Over the past 30 years it has become obvious that the products of human manufacture, even those produced to benefit society, can have negative effects on human health and the environment.

The field of Green and Sustainable Chemistry developed to help monitor, understand and limit the impact that chemicals have on our environment. Sustainable chemistry is all about developing new methods to reduce waste, boost energy efficiency and improve use of resources. In this way chemistry can both contribute to more sustainable industrial growth and to a greener economy and environment.

The Green and Sustainable Chemistry conference has a broad scope, addressing many diverse fields of Green and Sustainable Chemistry. The goal of the meeting is to bring together international researchers, from academia and industry, to communicate and share the latest developments across the broad and diverse fields that comprise Green and Sustainable Chemistry.

The conference session topics include:

• Mineral resources and recycling
• Non-fossil sources for old and new organic molecules
• Synthesis and solvents
• Catalysis and engineering
• Green and sustainable products
• Renewable energies
• Overarching approaches and new business models 
• Greenness and sustainability
• Ethics, legislation and economics 
• The Context

The conference will start on Sunday 3 April at 17:00 with a Welcome Reception and the full conference will commence on Monday at 9:00. You can download the full conference programme here and you can register for the conference here.

Chemistry challenge

Another unique feature of the conference will be the Green and Sustainable Chemistry Challenge. Entries for this competition consisted of projects that could be from any field of Green or Sustainable Chemistry but had to be applicable for use in developing countries.

At the conference the top five candidates will be invited to make presentations to a panel of judges. The winners will be selected from these five finalists and an award ceremony will held at the end of the conference. The winning project will receive €50 000; with a second prize of €25 000.

Launching a Pact for Innovation at 7EIS

Hosted by Knowledge4Innovation, the 7th European Innovation Summit took place at the European Parliament in Brussels on 7–10 December. With everyone from young entrepreneurs and students to European Commissioners and MEPs in attendance, the stage was set for exciting discussions on how Europe can bridge the innovation gap. Cefic co-organised a Breakfast debate on ‘Advanced materials and breakthrough opportunities for the energy transition’ at the event. Science writer Ben Skuse reports.

More than 1 500 delegates, including more than 50 MEPs, attended 2015’s European Innovation Summit (7EIS), offering a unique opportunity for stakeholders across the spectrum to get together and discuss the key challenges and opportunities for Europe to capitalise on its innovation potential, increase its competitiveness and help solve global problems.

Alongside the cross-sector, cross-disciplinary themes discussed throughout 7EIS’s plenary sessions and coffee breaks, a number of more targeted debates took place at the event. These offered the chance to hear sector-specific challenges and opportunities from leading stakeholders in each field. Critical topics including industry, environment, agriculture, bio-economy, health, transport, safety and security, quantum computing, the role of regions and cities, and energy were all debated through dedicated sessions.

Advanced materials, competitive economy
The latter – energy – was the focus of Cefic’s co-organised Breakfast debate entitled ‘Advanced materials and breakthrough opportunities for the energy transition’ on 8 December. Dedicated to how the chemical industry can contribute to enabling Europe make the transition to a competitive, sustainable low-carbon economy through innovation, the session was hosted by MEP Professor Jerzy Buzek with presentations from key policy makers and industry representatives including Cefic Executive Director for Research and Innovation Pierre Barthélemy.

Introducing the debate Prof. Buzek stressed the need for an innovative leap, in which development of advanced material would be very important, to enable change in the way we make and use energy.  Rudolph Strohmeier, Deputy Director General at the European Commission’s DG for Research and Innovation (below) agreed describing the Commission’s “two-sided approach with the Energy Union and SET plan and the Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) initiative - that includes advanced materials - to achieve a real energy revolution.”

Pierre Barthélemy highlighted the chemical industry’s responsibility to contribute to energy issues along the entire value chain and called for further EU support for technology development activities but also for the deployment of novel technologies. For example, central talking points included the chemical industry’s role in providing lightweight materials offering improved energy efficiency for the transport, construction and industry sectors described by Christian Collette of Arkema. While advanced materials for key energy technologies, such as energy storage, solar cells and wind turbines, and new materials for carbon capture and use as fuels or chemical energy storage were highlighted by Peter Nagler of Evonik.

The debate went well beyond advanced materials, turning to wider energy-related concerns, as Cefic Innovation Manager and SusChem Secretary Jacques Kormorniki illuminates: “There were excellent statements and discussions around the topic of energy during the Breakfast debate. This aligns with what we try to do in the SET-Plan and SusChem’s Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda – to have a global view of the energy issues.”

For example Martin Winter from Clariant claimed that advances in chemical catalysis to 2050, particularly for the synthesis of ammonia, could save energy equivalent to the current consumption of Germany and boost the global fight against hunger.

A Pact for Innovation
Although highly diverse, all the sessions and subjects were linked by the common goal of providing an environment in which Europe’s young innovators can be creative, expand their businesses and compete in the global economy. And nowhere was this theme more evident than in the official launch of the Pact for Innovation (INPACT) during the Summit’s opening ceremony on 7 December.

INPACT aims to create a space for innovation stakeholders and European institutions to meet and collaborate, in order to tackle key issues at the local, national and regional levels that hinder excellence in innovation. In essence, it will provide platforms for Europe’s innovators in all sectors to communicate with policy makers in a meaningful way.

Further, the Pact will focus on introducing and optimising favourable conditions for innovators to operate in and will lay the foundations for the next generation to be able to take risks. “A stronger EU-wide commitment is needed, and that’s why we’ve come forward with this Pact for Innovation, not just another reformulation of the overall [innovation] strategy between the key European institutions – we strive for a stronger, less institution-centric and firmer dialogue with all stakeholders,” stated Lambert van Nistelrooij, Chair, K4I Forum Governing Board, during his address.

The launch of INPACT was warmly welcomed by European Commissioner for Research Carlos Moedas at the opening ceremony (see box below).

Open Innovation 2.0
Offering a basis for INPACT to succeed, another strong theme pervading the conference was Open Innovation 2.0. Based on a Quadruple Helix Model, involving government, industry, academia and civil stakeholders, Open Innovation 2.0 calls for all actors to co-create the future through networking, collaboration, corporate entrepreneurship, proactive intellectual property management and R&D.

 “To use an analogy, we need multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary models of innovation with all stakeholders, all disciplines, all levels of technology readiness in a boiling kettle with the public authorities providing the kettle, the fire and ensuring the soup has all the right ingredients,” explains Bror Salmelin, Innovation Systems Adviser at the European Commission, DG CONNECT, and co-creator of the Open Innovation 2.0 paradigm. “And then we have the chefs who know how to cook it and how to grab onto the results – these are entrepreneurs, large or small.”

“Innovation is not a linear process any more, it is not science-based excellence, it’s about creating a lot of collisions, igniting new ideas that can be prototyped in a real-world setting very quickly, with the end-user there to say what is working and not,” Salmelin concludes.

Enabling innovators to innovate
Key to a meaningful dialogue between Europe’s innovators and policy makers, and introducing Open Innovation 2.0 to the current and next generation of innovators, will be engaging youth.

A number of young innovators were in attendance at 7EIS to offer their perspective of the innovation environment in Europe. During the parallel session ‘The next generation: mobility, jobs and entrepreneurship’, policy makers, academics and entrepreneurs shared their experiences with an eclectic crowd, including Govinda Upadhyay, 2015 EIT CHANGE award winner and founder of educational solar LED lamp startup LED safari. “It’s really good to see how people are working in the innovation direction at the European Union level, but I wish that this could be on a much more grand scale,” he explained after the session. “I am sure that if the policy makers took more initiative for young entrepreneurs in terms of market, funding, really encouraging them, it would be very beneficial.”

Another speaker at the session Tobias Bahnemann, co-founder of groundbreaking 3D sensor startup Toposens, shared Upadhyay’s tentatively positive sentiment: “The policy makers are listening to the problems and wishes of young entrepreneurs here definitely, but we will have to wait a few years to see if any changes have been made as a result.”

Support for the innovators

But perhaps entrepreneurs will not have to wait so long: “I would like to see Europe go further and faster towards open innovation,” stated European Commissioner Carlos Moedas in his foreword to the 7EIS programme.

During his speech at the Summit’s opening ceremony, Moedas went on to outline how he wishes to achieve a better innovation ecosystem. He explained how INPACT aligns perfectly with his idea of building a European Innovation Council to support innovators in the same way that the European Research Council boosts scientific discovery: “I was looking at the Pact for Innovation and I saw four key words that I think are essential […]. The first is careers, the second is refocus, the third is citizens and the fourth is future [… ]. Careers, yes: we have to streamline instruments, we have to get people in Europe to know where to go when they come to us. Refocus, yes: the European Innovation Council is all about refocus[ing]. Citizens, yes: it’s about how you get these new innovators to get on board. And the last point, future generation: […] how you transform curricula from a very young age to the Master’s level. And all this is about how you can get a bottom-up experience for innovators.”

“I would like to see Europe go further and faster towards open innovation,” – Carlos Moedas

SPiCE3 Energy Efficiency gets Green Light for Phase Two

Today (13 January 2016) the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic) has announced further support for EU chemical companies to increase their energy efficiency and competitiveness. This fresh investment round supports an innovative project designed to help European chemical companies to improve their energy efficiency: SPiCE3 (Sectoral Platform in Chemicals for Energy Efficiency Excellence). The SPiCE3 initiative provides a wealth of free resources to all chemical companies including workshops, peer-to-peer mentoring, on-site coaching and targeted events promoting best practice.

Europe’s SMEs represent a huge collective potential for driving energy efficiency, but can face challenges such as the lack of tools, expertise or resources. SPiCE3 will continue to provide accessible, hands-on assistance to SMEs, helping them with them to implement concrete measures that boost their energy efficiency.

Over 6 500 European companies have so far been reached through the SPiCE3 programme via:

• 63 SME on-site trainings
• 48 workshops at the local level reaching more than 650 participants
• Three EU-wide events raising awareness of energy management best practices
• The SPiCE3 web portal - a ‘one-stop shop’ for energy efficiency information and resources, including case studies, best practices, funding guides and newsletters

The continued investment by Cefic consolidates an industry-wide commitment to support increasing energy efficiency and competitiveness. As an energy intensive industry, the chemical sector alone consumes around 12% of the EU’s total energy demand, and one-third of EU industrial energy use. In addition, energy can be up to 25% of the total costs of an SME in the EU chemical sector. Therefore increasing energy efficiency is essential to preserving the industry’s competitiveness and to help meet Europe’s climate action goals.

Learn more about the SPiCE3 project in the video below.



For more information on SPiCE3 visit the web portal your one-stop shop for energy efficiency information including 50 case studies, 20 best practice guides and much, much more.

Catching up with biobased at EFIB 2015

The European Forum for Industrial Biotechnology and the Bioeconomy (EFIB) 2015 took place on 27-29 October at the Square in Brussels and the eighth EFIB was the biggest yet. SusChem and Cefic organised a dedicated session on biobased chemical value chains as part of the conference on 29 October entitled: ‘Is the chemical industry catching up with biobased.’

The session covered changing attitudes and approaches by the chemical sector to biobased, the measures needed to accelerate uptake of renewable feedstocks, and views on the most significant recent developments in the biobased industry sector.

Transformative
The SusChem session highlighted the transformative nature of the bioeconomy and its strong impact on the chemical industry. This goes beyond mere adoption of new feedstock; the emergence of the bioeconomy can lead to entirely new value chains, products with new or enhanced functionality, new markets and new business models.

The panelists in the session shared optimistic perspectives on its theme of the ‘chemical industry catching up with biobased’ including several highly relevant success stories. But they also expressed an array of motivations for considering biobased feedstock ranging from an opportunistic approach (the new properties and improved competitiveness that certain biobased products could provide) to strong consumer demand for some segments of the industry and longer term sustainability objectives.

The rational choice of raw materials and their smart use is a key factor for better resource and energy efficiency - indeed the bioeconomy is one option for the chemical industry to reach its challenging sustainability objectives. Therefore the chemical industry needs to be prepared to foster industrial symbiosis combining different technologies in a truly sustainable approach. For example, the combination of chemical and biotechnological processes can provide the tools to maximize the full potential of biomass.

“A Biorefinery is a good example of Industrial Symbiosis as it requires multiple partners”

Considering upstream aspects of the biobased value chain, raw material availability and feedstock price are major drivers that influence directly the development of new biobased products. On the other hand, consumer needs must be taken into consideration since the conception phase of new products and markets, as well as transparency via product labelling, are important to increase the acceptance of biobased products in society.

Cultural barriers and skills
The discussion covered the need to overcome cultural barriers with new or unusual partners and the necessity for the chemical industry to deal more closely with upstream partners in the biobased value chains. Looking at the challenge for another perspective an interesting question was: “Is biobased prepared to be part of the chemical industry?”

Panelists also stressed the need to communicate more and better to society/ the general public about the benefits of biobased products and services.

An interesting discussion within the panel and with the audience touched upon the skills required to develop the bioeconomy. New skills, including ways to work across different disciplines, are strongly required for the development of biobased value chains. However “the borders between disciplines are blurred” and this is a challenge that needs to be addressed.

The session was hosted by Cefic’s Executive Director Research and Innovation Pierre Barthélemy with Dr. Henrike Gebhardt of Evonik Industries, Reinhard Buescher of DG Grow, European Commission, François Monnet from Solvay, Dr. Stefan Lundmark of Perstorp AB, and Dr Marcel Wubbolts from DSM on the discussion panel (see above).

SusChem and the bioeconomy
Industrial Biotechnology is currently worth €23 billion representing just 6% of sales in the overall worldwide chemicals market. However, the sector is significantly out-performing the overall chemicals market at an impressive 20% annual growth rate and has the potential to become the dominant technology of tomorrow’s chemicals industry.

The SusChem Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda (SIRA) includes a dedicated chapter on ‘A Sustainable and Inclusive Bioeconomy’ and SusChem is an essential link between the chemical industry, industrial biotechnology and stakeholders in the bioeconomy.

The platform is actively involved in two large and relevant PPPs between the European Commission and industry launched in 2014:

• The joint technology initiative ‘Biobased Industries’ (BBI) that brings together research and industry partners along the whole value chain of biobased products and focuses on innovation for products from biobased feedstock.
• The PPP ‘Sustainable Process Industry through Resource and Energy Efficiency’ (SPIRE) that provides a solid basis for academia, SMEs, and multinational companies to collaborate on cross-sectorial initiatives in these areas.

SusChem contributes to the alignment of both initiatives. The interface between BBI and
SPIRE is the provision and use of biobased platform chemicals. In addition, both PPPs may support projects using biotechnological conversion processes and specific improvements of biotechnology processes may be eligible for funding through either PPP. SusChem will enable the coherence of on-going and future funding initiatives and the deployment of flagship projects that demonstrate technological leadership and that Europe is a globally competitive location to invest in the bioeconomy.

EFIB 2015 Highlights
Further reporting on the activities at EFIB2015 and preliminary details on EFIB2016 to be held in Glasgow from 18 to 20 October 2016 can be accessed via the EFIB website.

A short video featuring highlights from the EFIB2015 conference and exhibition is embedded below.

Super SusChem Contest at 7EIS

This year at the Seventh European Innovation Summit (#7EIS) the SusChem exhibition area will not only feature the latest advances in European sustainable chemistry but also electronically enhanced magic and the chance to win a brand new Apple Watch! But don't worry if you can't get to Brussels by 10 December SusChem is also opening the #iwatch4me #suschemcontest to our blog and twitter followers.

SusChem has an Apple Watch to give away during #7EIS. To get a chance to win you need to take one (or more) of the quiz contests on the Cefic-SusChem Innovation for Growth website. The site covers innovation for Smart Cities, Resource Efficiency and Water - and each section hosts one or more short quiz contests. Completing any one of the contests will enter you in a draw for an Apple Watch!

The quiz contests are fun ways to learn how sustainable chemistry innovation helps society. Why not share the fun with your friends and colleagues using the hashtag #iwatch4me?

• Smart Cities Contest 
• Resource Efficiency contest
• Water Contest

If you haven’t already taken our entire set of contests, we invite you to take the rest by going to one of the contest pages above and increase your chances of winning! The competition will close at 14:00 (Brussels time) on Wednesday 9 December.

Don’t forget to tweet your participation using the hashtag #iwatch4me. The lucky winner will be announced at 15:00 on Wednesday 9 December 2015 at the SusChem booth in the 7th European Innovation Summit exhibition area and we will be announcing the winners via the SusChem twitter channel (@suschem) too of course.

To learn more about the wonderful solutions that chemistry has for the significant facing our society today, please explore our Innovation4Growth portal.

Click here to download the full rules of our Innovation4Growth Flash Twitter Contest here!

7EIS
Organised by Knowledge4Innovation, the four-day event is taking place from 7 to 10 December 2015 in the European Parliament in Brussels.

The programme of 7EIS focuses on key-challenges and opportunities in the field of innovation. The summit will host numerous sessions and events on Europe’s grand challenges in the innovation sector ranging from energy to industry, environment and agriculture, the bio-economy, health, transport, safety and security, quantum computing, and the role of regions and cities. It will provide a platform for leaders in various sectors to discuss the policies and instruments required to promote innovation throughout the economy.

Innovation Summit to feature Advanced Materials, Innovation Pact and Youth

From 7 to 10 December the Seventh European Innovation Summit (7EIS) will set the stage for the future of innovation in Europe and SusChem will be there to highlight its contribution to sustainable innovation. 7EIS is organised by Knowledge4Innovation (K4I) and will take place in the European Parliament in Brussels. Cefic and SusChem are organising a special breakfast session on Advanced Materials for Energy on the morning of 8 December.

The four day 7EIS event will call for a ‘Pact for Innovation’ with the objective of developing an ambitious vision of what innovation can do for the EU economy and society. The future-oriented bottom-up approach of the Pact will unite a group of local, regional, national and EU innovation stakeholders.

The 7EIS programme focuses on key-challenges and opportunities in the field of innovation. The summit will host numerous sessions and events on Europe’s grand challenges in the innovation sector ranging from energy to industry, environment and agriculture, the bio-economy, health, transport, safety and security, quantum computing, and the role of regions and cities. It will provide a platform for leaders in various sectors to discuss the policies and instruments required to promote innovation throughout the economy.

Materials for the energy transition
The Cefic-SusChem session will address global trends including population growth, climate change, urbanisation and the rising demand for energy that present major challenges for society. Advanced materials have a strategic importance to support economic and sustainable growth, strengthen competitiveness and enable the transition to a low-carbon economy that meets these challenges.

The chemical industry, as a provider of innovative advanced materials, is in a unique position to supply the sustainable solutions that society needs to make this energy transition and to address the critical energy challenge we face. The chemical industry brings a vital contribution across the entire energy value chain including:

• Materials –including lightweight materials - for improved energy efficiency in areas from transportation to construction and industry
• Materials and key enabling technologies for advanced energy storage including new battery technologies
• Materials that enable new low-carbon energy production such as solar cells, wind turbines and other renewable energy sources
• Materials and technologies (Power to Gas, Power to Liquid) that can capture and use CO2 for alternative sustainable fuels and chemical energy storage, and
• The ultimate goal of direct conversion of atmospheric CO2 to fuels and materials

Join the session on the morning of 8 December from 08:00 to discuss these exciting opportunities and challenges for innovation and find out about new developments from the chemical industry that can enable Europe to make the transition to a competitive, sustainable low-carbon economy.

The session will be hosted by Jerzy Buzek, MEP, Vice Chair of the K4I Forum Governing Board and speakers will include K4I President Gernot Klotz as the session moderator, Rudolph Strohmeier from DG Research and Innovation in the European Commission, Peter Nagler, Head of International Innovation at Evonik and SusChem board member, Christian Collette, VP Research & Development at Arkema, Martin Winter, Senior Manager Corporate New Business Development at Clariant, and Pierre Barthélemy, Cefic’s Executive Director R&I and also a SusChem board member. More details of the session can be found here.

Cefic and SusChem will also be present in the 7EIS exhibition area at the Parliament including an innovative interactive game offering the chance to win valuable prizes – more details soon!

Socio-economic impact of EU JUs
Another session of interest to SusChem stakeholders on 8 December involves the Biobased Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI JU). A debate stating at 17:00 will look at the new Joint Undertakings (JUs) that have been set up to drive innovation in key industrial sectors including aviation, health, fuel cells and hydrogen, and bio-based products and materials.

The session will investigate the broader socio-economic impacts of the JUs. Early analyses reveal that the JUs are starting to make a real difference in this area, for example by enabling growth and job creation, and by delivering results that are already having an impact on some of the biggest challenges facing European society.

High-level representatives of the European Commission and the JUs, including Philippe Mengal, Executive Director of the BBI JU and Bert de Colvenaer, Executive Director of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen JU, will present facts and figures on their socio-economic impact so far, and offer an insight into their expected impact in the years to come.

Youth focus
A special focus of the 7EIS summit will be on youth involvement. In order to spark a debate that provides constructive, sustainable and concrete contributions to future EU-policy making, young innovators from all over Europe will actively engage with policy-makers and innovation leaders. In addition, the summit will provide young innovators with a unique platform to enhance cross-border networking.

To register and be part of 7EIS complete your registration by 27 November. For more details visit the Knowledge for Innovation website or contact the K4I secretariat.

2015 LRI Innovative Science Award Winner Announced

French researcher Dr. Alice Limonciel was awarded the €100,000 LRI Innovative Science award, one of Europe’s largest research grants for early career scientists, at an award ceremony at Cefic’s 17th Annual Long-Range Initiative (LRI) Workshop in Brussels on November 18, 2015.

Dr.  Limonciel’s winning research proposal is entitled "Establishment of thresholds of activation of stress
responses pathways and ligand-activated receptors for chemical classification” and will investigate cellular responses to the acceleration of chronic kidney disease progression due to chemical exposure. The project aims to identify the genes involved in cellular stress response pathways, quantify these responses in parallel with markers of cellular dysfunction and deliver a new generation of quantitative tools based on gene expression to evaluate the hazard linked to chemical exposure for use in risk assessment strategies.

Dr. Pierre Barthélemy, Cefic Executive Director of Research and Innovation commented: “It’s always a pleasure to see the enthusiasm of early career scientists and their desire to make our world safer. The LRI Innovative Science is a great opportunity for them to develop their breakthrough ideas with complete freedom, find new approaches to tackle risk assessment and help reduce uncertainty as it relates to chemicals safety”.

Dr. Limonciel (pictured above, right, receiving the award from Yves Verschueren Managing Director of Essenscia)  studied pharmacology and toxicology at the engineering school Polytech’ Nice-Sophia in France. She completed her doctoral studies in the department of Physiology and Medical Physics at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria in 2013.  Dr. Limonciel is currently working at Innsbruck as a Postdoctoral researcher on molecular mechanisms of nephrotoxicity notably using the integration of multiple omic datasets such as transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and epigenomics.

A video from the LRI Award ceremony 2015 is embedded below. 



The award ceremony and dinner were the highlights of the first day of the 2015 Annual CEFIC-LRI Workshop. The second day of the workshop will focus on non–animal-based safety assessment and will showcase the outcome and impact of several LRI projects completed in 2014-2015 from the fields of environmental risk assessment, bioconcentration, chemo-informatics, exposure modelling, skin sensitization and acceptance of innovation.

About the Award
The LRI Innovative Science Award worth €100 000 was first introduced in 2004 as a funding opportunity for young scientists based in Europe. Its aim is to stimulate innovative research, to foster ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking and to introduce new approaches that will advance the environmental assessment of hazardous substances. More than a decade later, it is still the biggest award of its kind in Europe and has helped numerous scientists realise their ambitions and become part of the LRI scientific network.

The Long-range Research Initiative (LRI) is part of Cefic's voluntary initiatives to improve the Regulatory Framework of the chemical industry in Europe. Its mission is to identify and fill gaps in our understanding of the hazards posed by chemicals and to improve the methods available for assessing the associated risks.

For more information on the LRI activities and the award, please contact Programme Manager Bruno Hubesch.

Sustainable Chemistry for a Sustainable World

From 30 November to 11 December 2015, world leaders will meet in Paris at the Conference of the Parties (COP-21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Their objective will be to seek agreement on a global framework to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, strengthen climate resilience and mobilise global political will to address the global climate challenge. This is a challenge that requires the contribution of a sustainable chemistry sector.

In early November leaders of Cefic, the European chemical industry association, published a signed letter in the Financial Times expressing firm support for government’s efforts to secure a strong, globally binding climate change agreement at COP21 in Paris. The full text of the letter to The Financial Times is reproduced below.

The letter clearly stated that the chemical industry does and will continue to support efforts by European governments and institutions to achieve a competitive, low carbon economy. However the leaders stressed the importance of the word “competitive” in that sentence: only a competitive, sustainable European chemical industry can contribute to the achievement of a low carbon economy through its essential innovations.

SusChem and a sustainable chemical industry
“The chemical industry is key in addressing the climate change challenge.  It is a critical supplier of novel materials and advanced technologies to many value chains and therefore a crucial partner in achieving a competitive, low-carbon economy,” comments Pierre Barthélemy Cefic’s Executive Director, Research and Innovation.

Sustainability is an overriding priority for the chemical industry and the industry can do much to change societal production and consumption patterns. In particular the sector can promote resource efficient products and is a key enabler for the advanced innovative products and services that can deliver sustainable solutions throughout the economy. Together with supply chain partners, the chemical industry takes a holistic approach to sustainability. With a skilled workforce, a sustainable chemical sector can develop and produce innovative products, services and solutions for a growing global population, while striving to conserve our planet’s resources and respecting the environment.

And SusChem-inspired initiatives and actions are a key part of this.

“Addressing the climate change challenge depends strongly on technological innovation to reduce the energy and feedstock footprint of our society," says Pierre Barthélemy. "SusChem proposes numerous solutions based on enabling technologies that can foster a more sustainable economy and ensure a positive impact on our society and the environment, including the transition to a more circular economy.”

Cefic statement
Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, CEO Solvay and Cefic President elaborates more on the importance of sustainability and the chemical industry in the video below.



You can find out much more about the European Chemical Industry’s approach and view on COP-21, including more video interviews with chemical industry leaders, here.

An open letter to the European Council, European Commission and European Parliament

The European chemical industry backs strong global climate change agreement at COP21

"We, leaders of the European chemical industry, applaud the diplomatic efforts to achieve an ambitious and globally-binding agreement in the Paris climate negotiations next month. Climate action is needed worldwide, to truly protect future generations from this global problem.

Today, the chemical industry is a pillar of the European economy: a €551 billion industry in 2014 with a significant trade surplus of €43.5 billion, providing over 1 million direct jobs and nearly 2.5 million indirect jobs in Europe.

We believe the chemical industry is also a pillar of tomorrow’s low carbon economy.

We represent a creative industry, whose greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by 54% on 1990 levels while production grew by 70%. So, we want to set the record straight that Cefic does, and will continue to, support efforts by European governments and institutions to achieve a competitive, low-carbon economy.

Chemistry is often all but invisible yet essential to consumers’ everyday lives: from health and hygiene to transport, construction and computing. Chemical innovation enables current and future climate change solutions, including renewable energy, energy storage and thousands of products to improve energy efficiency, such as in vehicles and buildings. In future years, chemical companies around the world will develop many more of these innovative and important solutions.

For now, Europe’s chemical industry is facing the reality of ever fiercer global competition. It must remain competitive in order to continue being innovative.

Climate change policy leadership in Europe should not come at the expense of ‘investment leakage’ – the effect of regional imbalances in climate regulations and associated cost differences that lead to the relocation of carbon emissions but not to an overall global reduction. For this reason we would warmly welcome a successful outcome in next month’s climate negotiations. Meanwhile Europe’s policymakers also need to make certain that measures are in place ensuring energy-intensive industries are not exposed to investment leakage in any scenario. European deindustrialisation is not and should never be seen as a viable option on the journey to decarbonisation.

We wish success to all involved in the negotiations in Paris next month."