Best Practice for Resource Efficiency

The ‘Best Practices on Resource Efficiency for the Chemical Industry’ workshop will take place on 18 March at the CIRCE Office at Rue du Trone 98, Brussels from 9:00. The workshop will discuss how partners in the FP7 R4R (Chemical Regions for Resource Efficiency) project and external clusters have or plan to implement best practice and action plans to make the European Chemical Industry more resource efficient and to discuss potential ways to increase collaboration.

The workshop is a unique opportunity to meet the principle chemical clusters in Europe and learn from their experiences. The main focus will be on non-technical solutions proposed within a cluster to improve the resource efficiency of its members: new business models, structural reorganisations, adoption of tools that facilitate interactions, financing and management for innovation etc.

The outcome of the workshop will be included in documentation to be sent to the European Commission.

Registration
You can download the flyer for the workshop here. Places at the workshop are limited. To confirm your participation or for more information, please contact Carlos Arsuaga at CIRCE. The registration deadline for the workshop is 10 March. CIRCE is an energy research centre founded in 1993 with support from the University of Zaragoza in Spain.

About R4R
Launched in late 2012, R4R is funded for three years under the European Commission’s FP7 Research and Innovation Framework Programme. The ‘Chemical Regions for Resource Efficiency (R4R)’ project aims to overcome fragmentation of European ambitious and innovative regions. Through its methodology, R4R could lead the path to a range of promising and positive impacts on resource efficiency.

R4R brings together six complementary EU Regions (Aragon in Spain, Göteborg in Sweden, North Rhine–Westphalia in Germany, the Port of Rotterdam and the South-West regions in the Netherlands, and West Pomerania in Poland), each with their own public and private research and innovation expertise. The R4R project aims to achieve a major step improvement in regional and transnational cooperation among its participating regions and will develop practices, tools and examples which can be easily disseminated to and adopted by multiple European regions to improve regional and cross-regional collaboration in general, and in the process industry on resource efficiency in particular.

R4R will create a platform for international collaboration on resource efficiency with clusters in third countries to improve and accelerate innovation and promote European eco-innovative technologies globally. To find out more visit the R4R website.

Book for final BIO-TIC Workshop on Bioplastics now!

The final Bio-Business workshop organized by SusChem’s FP7 BIO-TIC project will take place in Brussels on 1 December, 2014. The workshop is entitled "Bio-based Plastics – How do we grow the EU Industry?” Today, bio-based plastics have an established market, demonstrating rapid growth both in Europe and globally. But what is the future for this market?

“While Europe is currently the largest producer and user of bio-based plastics, this situation is expected to change in the future with production increasingly being based in countries where feedstocks are cheaper and where production costs are lower,” says Pierre Barthélemy, Innovation Manager at Cefic. “Even with increasing fossil fuel prices expected to make bio-based plastics more competitive compared to fossil-derived plastics, ensuring the cost-competitiveness of EU bio-based plastics production compared to other regions globally is expected to become an increasingly difficult challenge.”

The workshop on 1 December will give participants the opportunity to discuss the main hurdles that impact the use of industrial biotechnology in the bioplastics market segment and propose concrete actions to overcome these hurdles.

The BIO-TIC workshop is organized in connection with the 9th European Bioplastics Conference that is being hosted in Brussels on 2 and 3 December. 

Registration for the BIO-TIC workshop is free of charge and can be accessed via a dedicated website.

Objectives

With this series of five workshops, the BIO-TIC project has brought together industrial biotechnology end users (downstream) with technology providers (upstream), innovation agencies and decision makers to stimulate discussion and knowledge exchange.

The objectives of the workshops are to:

• identify technological, non-technological and market hurdles for the uptake of industrial biotechnology in these sectors, 
• develop recommendations and solutions to overcome the identified hurdles, 
• contribute to the development, testing and fine-tuning of the BIO-TIC roadmaps,
• bring together industrial biotechnology end users (downstream) with technology providers (upstream), innovation agencies and decision makers to stimulate interconnected discussion and knowledge exchange platforms and processes,
• collect data to develop draft indicators to measure the socio-economic and environmental impact of Industrial Biotechnology and the use of renewables-based products in the European Union.

More information

For more information on the BIO-TIC project and the business-case workshops visit the project website or contact Pierre Barthélemy at Cefic.

BIO-TIC: Register now for ‘Bio Business’ Workshops

Registration for five 'bio-Business case' workshops organised by SusChem’s FP7 BIO-TIC project is now open. By participating in these workshops you can help shape the strategic agenda to boost the uptake of industrial biotechnology (IB) in Europe. In addition BIO-TIC has just released a series of videos that describe the project’s rationale and objectives and the IB business roadmaps that it is developing.

The BIO-TIC project is organising five 'bio-Business case' workshops during the Autumn of 2014. These events will look into five major product segments and applications of Industrial Biotechnology (IB) in Europe that promise significant potential for Europe’s industry and society by 2030.

The workshops are organised around the following topics:

• Use of IB in Biosurfactants on 3 September 2014 in Berlin, Germany
• CO2-based Chemicals Business Case on 24 September 2014 at CPE Lyon, France
• Chemical Building Blocks: 'What do we need to do to build sustainable foundations for the bio-based chemical industry in Europe?' on 1 October 2014 in Reims, France
• Biofuels on 20 October 2014 in London, United Kingdom.
• Bio-based Plastics: 'How do we Grow the EU Industry?' on 1 December 2014 in Brussels, Belgium

Registration for all of the workshops is now open and can be accessed here via a dedicated website.

Knowledge exchange
With these workshops, the BIO-TIC project consortium aims to bring together industrial biotechnology end users (downstream) with technology providers (upstream), innovation agencies and decision makers to stimulate interconnected discussion and knowledge exchange platforms and processes.

The objective of the workshops is to:

• Identify technological, non-technological and market hurdles for the uptake of industrial biotechnology in these sectors
• Develop recommendations and solutions to overcome the identified hurdles
• Contribute to the development, testing and fine-tuning of the BIO-TIC roadmaps
• Bring together industrial biotechnology end users (downstream) with technology providers (upstream), innovation agencies and decision makers to stimulate interconnected discussion and knowledge exchange platforms and processes
• Collect data to develop draft indicators to measure the socio-economic and environmental impact of IB and the use of renewables-based products in the European Union

BIO-TIC videos
Funded by the European Commission, BIO-TIC was launched in 2012, as an FP7 project, with the aim to establish an overview of the barriers to biotechnology innovation and propose solutions to overcome them.

BIO-TIC has now published a series of videos that explain the rationale and objectives of the project and the three roadmaps that it is developing.

In the first video Antoine Peeters, Manager for Industrial Biotechnology at EuropaBio, gives an overview of the BIO-TIC project; its main activities and current status; the business cases, the project’s anticipated impact and future actions. This video is embedded at the end of this blog

Pádraig Naughton, Cefic innovation manager, features in a video explaining Cefic's role in the BIO-TIC project and outlining how wider use of industrial biotechnology (IB) can help the chemical industry grow.

A major milestone in the BIO-TIC project is the development of three roadmaps: market, technological, and non-technological. The project has recently released the second draft versions of the roadmaps which can be downloaded from the project website.

Anna Saarentaus, Principal at Pöyry, talks about the market drivers related to the various product segments and gives an overview of the projected use of IB in Europe by 2030. This video gives a comprehensive overview of the market potential for industrial biotechnology and of the value chain composition and stakeholders in various product segments and is an excellent introduction to the market roadmap.

The technological roadmap aims to gain insight into the R&D related hurdles that are impeding the full realisation of Europe’s IB market potential in 2030. In addition, the roadmap seeks to set priorities in terms of R&D and other actions to overcome the R&D barriers. In the video introducing the technological roadmap Elsbeth Roelofs, Senior Business Consultant at TNO, gives an overview of the R&D hurdles in Industrial Biotechnology in Europe and explains how the BIO-TIC roadmaps can help to overcome them.

The non-technological roadmap aims to identify regulatory and non-technological hurdles that may inhibit innovation and prevent the realisation of the market and technological potential of IB. Furthermore, the non-technological roadmap seeks to propose solutions to these hurdles by confronting theory and practice. The non-technological roadmap is introduced in a video with Antoine Peeters of EuropaBio who gives an overview of the non-technological hurdles of IB and explains how the BIO-TIC roadmaps will contribute to further develop the non-technological opportunities for IB applications in Europe.

More information
Input from the market and experts in industry and research are critical to build a basis for the roadmaps and to ensure that actions are developed which best fit the needs of this sector.  SusChem, Cefic and the BIO-TIC partners welcome any comments on the current draft documents. You can submit comments via email.

For more information on the BIO-TIC project and the business-case workshops visit the project website or contact Pierre Barthélemy, Innovation Manager at Cefic.

Second CRM_InnoNet Innovation Network Workshop

The FP7 CRM_InnoNet project is organizing its second Innovation Network Workshop in the field of substitution of critical raw materials on 14 May 2014 in Brussels. The workshop will take a special focus on strategic sectors such as Energy, Transport and ICT with the key speakers from each sector as well as participatory activities. The project has also recently published reports analysing the ICT and energy sector and assessing the substitution potential for the 14 materials listed as Critical Raw Materials by the European Commission. 

The event, which takes place at the Diamant Conference and Business Centre in Brussels, is free to attend and is open for all stakeholders who are involved in any part of the Critical Raw Materials value chain and are willing to exchange ideas and visions for enhancing the competitiveness of the European Union’s research and development and innovation (R&D&I), its industry and economy in the area of substitution of Critical Raw Materials.

Further information on registration and other arrangements will be available soon. The project can also support some travel costs for attendees from SMEs. Please visit CRM_InnoNet website for more information.

Information and speaker presentations from the network’s first Innovation workshop held on 15 April 2013 in Brussels can be found here. This first event was attended by more than by 120 delegates representing 87 organisations inside and outside the European Union.

Critical reports
The full CRM_InnoNet project team of 18 partners recently met in Runcorn, UK for an interim meeting (see team photo below). The project has spent the last year completing comprehensive bottom-up and top-down mapping of critical raw materials usage in Europe.

Three reports from this analysis are now available for download:

• Supply chain analysis of the ICT and electronics sector
• Supply chain analysis of the energy sector
• Raw materials profiles

The third report on Raw Materials profiles is a detailed assessment of the substitutability of the European Commission’s list of 14 Critical raw Materials (the EU -14) in their end use applications.  This report is currently open for consultation, so if you have any feedback on any aspect of the report, please contact the CRM_InnoNet secretariat.

The project is now embarking on its next phase: writing the roadmaps for substitution of critical raw materials in Europe. These are plenty of opportunities to input into these roadmaps including the Innovation Network workshop on 14 May.

What is CRM_InnoNet?
The project is a Coordination and Support Action (CSA) funded under FP7 that is creating an integrated community to drive innovation in the field of critical raw material substitution for the benefit of EU industry.

The European Innovation Partnership (EIP) on Raw Materials aims to play a major role in securing a sustainable supply of raw materials for Europe and has set itself an ambitious list of targets to achieve by 2020. CRM_InnoNet’s goals complement those of the EIP on Raw Materials and the project will seek to align its outputs with those of the EIP.

The CRM_InnoNet consortium is comprised of recognised and experienced key actors across the value chain of substitution of CRM representing academic, research and industry bodies of relevant sectors that will ensure a wide European coverage and high potential to engage other necessary players across the European Research Area.

More information
For more information visit the CRM_InnoNet website that includes a blog, news and events, or the contact project secretariat at CIKTN.