Biobased for Growth - a public-private partnership on biobased industries - Draft Vision document

To accelerate innovation and to boost market uptake and public awareness of biobased products, a European Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for biobased industries is needed. Putting the European Commission's strategy "A Bioeconomy for Europe" into practice, the objectives of the PPP are to foster "radical innovation", from R&D and deployment to market pull, to deliver biobased products superior, or at least comparable to, non-biobased products in terms of price, performance, availability, and sustainability.

This global paradigm shift from oil-based towards biobased materials represents a unique opportunity for Europe to kick-start a world-leading competitive bioeconomy with significant economic, environmental and societal benefits. It will build on existing EU strengths and resources, embracing technological and scientific excellence and creating new and novel partnerships between hitherto unconnected industries. Supplementing food production, the conversion of biomass into bioproducts will likewise present a chance for the EU27 agricultural and forestry sectors to diversify revenues and revitalise rural areas. >/p>

Emerging global trends show that leading economies are seizing on the bioeconomy too. The US and China have declared it the bioeconomy a priority putting in place ambitious bioeconomy policies1 and investments in biorefi neries. Nevertheless, the EU, with its strong agricultural, agro-food and forestry sectors and world-leading companies in the plant breeding, biotech, renewable energy and chemical/biochemical industries, is technologically poised to spearhead the development of a biobased economy with a global market value of 200bn Euros by 2020.

Whilst the European industry is already making significant investments in biorefineries, there remain critical technological, political and commercial challenges to be overcome before any large-scale commercialisation can succeed and innovative solutions brought to the market. Some of these barriers relate to the nascent and fragmented nature of emerging biobased industries as well as incoherent policy frameworks. Yet the most fundamental challenge which remains is to build new value chains and improve the economics of production through upscaling and industrialisaion.

In summary, the focus of the Biobased PPP is as follows:

• Feedstock: foster a sustainable biomass supply with increased productivity and building new value chains;
• Biorefineries: optimise efficient processing through R&D and upscaling at large-scale demo/flagship biorefineries;
• Markets, products and policies: develop markets for biobased products and optimising policy frameworks.