ADVANCEFUEL holds stakeholder workshop on lignocellulosic biomass supply chains

The ADVANCEFUEL project held its second stakeholder workshop on 20-21 November in Brussels, Belgium, in co-operation event with the SEEMLA project, which had its final conference during the morning of 20 November.

 

The workshop brought together eight related European projects and relevant stakeholders, to discuss innovative cropping systems and supply chains for lignocellulosic biomass.

 

SEEMLA’s final conference started with a presentation from Maria Georgiadou, (DG Research and Innovation, European Commission) who gave an overview of current and future policy support for advanced biofuels and bioenergy. She positively acknowledged the co-operation effort of all the participating projects and encouraged the representatives to continue this form of collaboration, helping to harmonise results and use obvious synergies.

 

Afterwards, the SEEMLA project team presented their main results by showing selected case studies in Germany, Greece and Ukraine, describing their specific approaches regarding the use of marginal lands for biomass production. They highlighted opportunities and potentials but also the challenges involved in the use of marginal lands – particularly related to ecological and socio-economic impacts. Similarly, the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and the SEEMLA GIS tool were presented. Finally, SEEMLA’s co-ordinator Diego Piedra-Garcia (FNR) presented the political recommendation, opening the panel discussion.

 

These presentations gave an introduction to the following ADVANCEFUEL workshop, which was led by the ADVANCEFUEL partners Philipp Grundmann, Sonja Germer and Katharina Sailer from the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy (ATB).

 

 

ADVANCEFUEL’s co-ordinator, Kristin Sternberg (FNR), welcomed the participants to the workshop and gave a short introduction to the project. She highlighted this particular set-up of the workshop having eight European projects working together to discuss an overlapping topic and thanked the present project representatives that they have followed ADVANCEFUEL’s invitation to participate in this workshop.

 

At first, the representatives from the other contributing projects (besides ADVANCEFUEL and SEEMLA: FORBIO, MAGIC, BECOOL, LIBBIO UP-RUNNING, GRACE), presented their project work and specific study cases. After the presentations, three interactive sessions were carried out on the following topics:

  • Cost reduction versus impact on the environment;
  • Success stories and failures regarding lignocellulosic biomass value chains;
  • Feedstock for advanced biofuels: market opportunities and constraints.

The topics were discussed in smaller groups involving specific analyses (in terms of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) of the selected scenarios. The results have subsequently been presented to and discussed with the whole group. The ADVANCEFUEL team will use the workshop’s outcomes for better determining the barriers involved in the biomass supply and for describing promising strategies for successful feedstock provisioning for producing advanced biofuels. The workshop results will be processed and evaluated and eventually be an important contribution to the related ADVANCEFUEL reports, tools and models. The participants gave a positive feedback and were quite satisfied with this mutual exchange of experiences.

 

Pictures of the workshop are availble in the media section. Presentations can be found below.

 

SEEMLA Final Conference

 

 

ADVANCEFUEL-SEEMLA Workshop

 

 

Innovative Cropping Schemes: Highlights from study cases on marginal land

 

Innovative lignocellulosic supply chains: Highlights from supply chains practices