One year of ADVANCEFUEL

The ADVANCEFUEL project held its third project meeting in Gothenburg (Sweden) on 21 September, to take stock of what has been achieved in the first year of the project and discuss upcoming activities.

 

In the first year, the project partners have opened the first two online stakeholder consultations, held one stakeholder workshop and three project meetings, finalised twelve deliverables and presented the project at numerous events across Europe.

 

Consultations

 

The first stakeholder consultation was on the topic of barriers to renewable transport fuels, and was held online from February to June 2018. The consultation asked stakeholders for their views on the main barriers to uptake of advanced fuels, to be prioritised in the project’s work. The consultation explored barriers along the value chain, examining feedstock supply, conversion and end-use. The consultation revealed that stakeholders perceived the following barriers to be the most pressing:

  • A lack of dedicated policy support and long-term stability for the industry;
  • A lack of structural financing mechanisms to bridge the price gap between renewable and fossil-based fuels;
  • The high production cost of renewable fuels in comparison to fossil fuel costs, and;
  • The high costs of renewable hydrogen production.

 

The conclusions of the consultation have already been validated with a high-level stakeholder workshop, and the final deliverable will shortly be available via this website.

 

The second consultation was on the topic of biomass sustainability performance, certification and standards. The consultation was open from May to June 2018, involving both an online consultation and one-on-one interviews with key stakeholders. The results will be available soon.

 

Stakeholder Workshops

 

In order to validate and consolidate the results from the online consultation on barriers to advanced fuels, the project organised a stakeholder workshop on 20 September in Gothenburg, Sweden. The high-level workshop attracted senior experts from all sectors of the value chain, with high participation from industry and end-users, including representatives from Shell, TOTAL and Volvo, as well as academic participants.

 

Preparations for the second ADVANCEFUEL workshop are well underway, in co-operation with the SEEMLA project. The workshop, to be held in Brussels on 20-21 November, will explore innovative lignocellulosic cropping systems and supply chains, and will bring together a number of other Horizon 2020 projects working in the field (FORBIO, MAGIC, BECOOL, LIBBIO, UP-RUNNING and AGROINLOG).

 

More details, including registration details, will be available shortly.

 

Deliverables

 

Twelve deliverables have been finalised in the first year of the project, with a number to be finalised in the coming months. As well as deliverables related to communications and management, the following deliverables have been produced. Those which are not yet on the project website will be available shortly:

  • Memo on key barriers to advanced biofuels (ECN/TNO)
  • Monitoring framework and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) (ECN/TNO)
  • Common framework for the project (ECN/TNO & Chalmers)
  • Report on definition of parameters for defining biomass conversion technologies (Chalmers)
  • Review of existing standards and certification schemes plus set of criteria and indicators to be implemented (Utrecht University)
  • Description of a full updated and verified RESolve model (ECN/TNO)

 

Events and Communication

 

Communication and representation are important tasks for ADVANCEFUEL, and significant efforts have been made in the first year to raise awareness of the project, including setting up the stakeholder platform, and creating the project website, communications materials, and the first project video. To actively reach relevant stakeholders, the project has been presented at a number of industry relevant events:

 

Stay up to date!

 

A lot of outputs are expected from the project in the next few months, including the organisation of the next stakeholder workshops. If you want to stay up to date with our activities, then remember to sign up to the stakeholder platform and follow us on Twitter!