Bio-waste is a key waste stream in Europe with a high potential for contributing to a more circular economy. The Tech4Biowaste project will pave the way for deployment of bio-waste technologies and technology configurations by setting-up a database providing a comprehensive technology overview (TRL4-9) for the valorisation of bio-waste (food waste and garden and park waste) into value added applications including chemicals, energy and fuels, food ingredients, and materials. The database content will be determined jointly with actors across the bio-waste value chain. Technology providers can showcase new and emerging technologies, even at lower TRL. Technology searchers can analyse and compare bio-waste valorisation technologies. Both categories of users can assess their commercialisation potential through the associated decision support tool. The Tech4Biowaste database will be composed of unique features based on the latest IT technologies, including artificial intelligence, and use of Open Source software. In order to catalyse significant database usage and future growth, it directly builds on the BBEPP-led Pilots4U network and links with the NOVA-led (parallel-developed) Renewable Carbon platform. A hybrid model will be used to populate the database, combining inputs from the consortium’s publishers’ team, a community of volunteers, and automated scripts and tools („bots"). Tech4Biowaste will mobilise stakeholders (incl. intended users and contributors) for direct involvement (Co-creation, Trainings 1 Testing Panel, 1 Advisory Board) e.g. in the design of the database, in the development of a continuation and expansion scenario and finally for the Business Plan targeting sustained growth and continuity of the open platform.

RoadToBio will deliver a roadmap that will specify the benefits for the chemical industry along the path towards a bioeconomy to meet the societal needs in 2030. The roadmap will contain the following two main components: (1) An analysis of the most promising opportunities (sweet spots) for the chemical industry to increase its bio-based portfolio, as well as the technological and commercial barriers and the hurdles in regulations and acceptance by society, governing bodies and the industry itself. (2) A strategy, action plan and engagement guide to overcome the existing and anticipated barriers and hurdles as mentioned above. Furthermore it will bring together different parts of chemical industry, society, and governing bodies, to start a dialogue and to create a platform where this action plan can unfold its full potential, in order to help meet the very ambitious targets of the BIC for 2030. The approach is based on three pillars, which are (a) analysis of status quo and potentials, (b) forward looking activities, (c) continuous feedback loops and interactions with stakeholders. The results will be wrapped up and phrased as a roadmap and an engagement guide describing the benefits and a way forward for the European Chemical Industry towards a more bio-based future. In order to derive a holistic roadmap that can lead the way, the analytical part of the project will consider feedstocks, technologies and markets as well as regulatory issues, societal needs, consumer questions and communication. The consortium partners bring in complementary expertise in relevant fields of the bioeconomy and chemical industry, covering in depth all aspects that need to be included in the roadmap. All partners have been or are still actively involved in successfully completed and ongoing FP7, H2020, and BBI projects on different aspects of the bioeconomy, as well as in several groups and committees working on political or standardization aspects of bio-based products.

LIFT will maximise the impact of Coordination and Support Actions (CSAs) by valorising their outcomes and promoting the collaboration among them. Lift aims at identifying gaps to be addressed to ensure a stimulating environment boosting the bio-based economy. In short LIFT will: 1)Provide a global vision of objectives and results of past and ongoing Coordination and Support Actions 2)Maximise the impact of CSAs results, and make them actionable by industries and policy makers. 3)Analyse existing CSA programming gaps and identify challenges to be addressed, through multistakeholders’ collaboration 4)Raise awareness and communicate the CSAs’ contribution in addressing bioeconomy-related challenges 5)Provide actionable recommendations and suggestions for new CSA topics for AWP 2020 LIFT will start with thorough mapping of relevant CSAs, the synthesis of their results and the analysis of CSA programming gaps vis-à-vis long-term bio-based industry objectives. LIFT will cover the identification of all relevant stakeholders and the creation and animation of a network of stakeholders. Next, LIFT findings and assets will be made readily available, integrated and especially actionable by industries and policy makers. To this end LIFT will unlock bio-economy CSA outputs through an online library, transform LIFT findings and results into Actionable Knowledge, and organise active stakeholder dialogue through Mobilisation and Mutual Learning (MML) workshops. LIFT activities, events, achievements, findings and online library results will be disseminated widely. The project will culminate in recommendations for future CSA programming contributing to the creation of a stimulating environment for a sustainable, strong and competitive bio-based industry in Europe. The recommendations will be validated with EC, BIC and BBI JU. They will include clear measures to ensure sustainability and exploitation of results. The LIFT consortium is industry-led and well- experienced in BBI JU.

The Bioeconomy Awareness and Discourse Project (BioCannDo) will raise awareness and acceptance of the broad public towards the bioeconomy and bio-based products through a strategic, stakeholder-driven information campaign and education. Convincing people that the bio-based economy offers something desirable, with new products, functionalities and applications for their daily life, that provide answers to societal concerns (e.g. climate change), requires neutral and science-based information. BioCannDo will present such information in a way that is easy to understand for the broader public. It will provide various means for feedback, interaction and encourges engagement in a discourse on common questions and concerns. Collaborating with bio-based stakeholder networks and communities at EU, regional and national level, BioCannDo will provide information, educational materials and key communication messages through such channels as a community of related projects and educational partners and an Inhub which combines different means of online communication (i.e. social media, blogs, videos, journalistic articles). BioCannDo will build on the legacy of previous projects (i.e. by using their networks, or social media accounts), existing material developed by them and be active in collecting, connecting, aggregating and reformulating content from different actors and resources. It will generate new content addressing the most urgent gaps in information and education. Such dual approach will help to maximise synergies and increase impact of both existing and new material. The developed content and key communication messages will be assessed and tested by stakeholders and target users through focus groups and a market survey. Findings will be used in feedback loops to adapt the content and messages.

BioTheRoS Project aims at developing a holistic methodology that will boost the scale-up of sustainable biofuels via thermochemical conversion technologies. These are pyrolysis upgrading through hydrodeoxygenation and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis from biomass gasification. The project will bring together key actors at a both European and International level, such as technological and social experts, renewable energy-oriented associations along with industrial experts that will bring and exchange their knowledge in order to reach the project targets. Within the project, several non-food biomass feedstock will be analyzed and optimized across their entire value chain. Barriers linked with the selected feedstocks supply and pretreatment will be identified. Furthermore, AI-based predictive models will be developed, in order to be adapted to the scale-up cases. Then, the most promising biomass feedstock will be tested experimentally in the studied thermochemical reactors. At this point of the project, technical constraints and opportunities for the scale-up of the sustainable biofuels thermochemical processes will be identified. Possible synergies of blending pyrolysis oil and gasification based advanced biofuels will be investigated by a potential end-user (petroleum company). The selected data will be used as an input for advanced modelling tools, including process modelling, CFD tools and LCA/LCC/sLCA tools results of which will feed a multi-criteria analysis to derive generalized up-scaling rules and guidelines of the produced biofuels. The engagement of several stakeholders in the planning of the scaling-up of sustainable biofuels production will be crucial at this point, since they will review the project results and assess if a biofuel production technology can be delivered from the lab/pilot to a larger-scale, by taking into account operational difficulties, plant cost and plant capacity limitations (technological barriers).