With Russia’s war on Ukraine, the European Commission has rediscovered the virtues of the bioeconomy for the EU’s energy independence and food security. But it also admits that trade-offs need to be addressed to avoid environmental damage.
The EU’s bioeconomy strategy, first adopted in 2012, aims at several goals, such as ensuring food security, reducing dependence on fossil fuels, and contributing to the fight against climate change while supporting local work.
These goals are “now more relevant than ever, following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and the need to accelerate the achievement of energy independence and strengthen food security,” the Commission said. – according to a progress report published before the summer.
The report, adopted on 9 June, examines the progress made since the EU’s bioeconomy strategy was adopted ten years ago. It says that EU countries are broadly on track with the adoption of national bioeconomy plans, placing Europe “in a strong position” in the global market for bio-based products. chemicals and materials.
Bio-based chemicals can turn algae into fuel, recycle plastic, convert waste into new furniture or clothing as well as transform industrial products into bio-based ones. fertilizers, the Commission said when it adopted the latest revision of the strategy, in 2018.
Bio-based products from the forestry sector can also contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. For example, using one ton of wood instead of one ton of concrete in construction could lead to a 2.1-ton reduction in carbon dioxide, the EU executive pointed out.
“Therefore, the bioeconomy will play an important role in achieving the goals of the European Green Deal and help us find solutions for the current food security and energy independence crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Brussels said in a statement released alongside it. June report.
According to the latest industry figures, bio-based industries have continued to grow over the years, making a total contribution of more than €814 billion to the EU economy in 2019 – or €34 billion more than last year.
Since 2014, the European Union has spent €3.7 billion on research and innovation to develop the bioeconomy, including the construction of several industrial biorefineries that can convert biomass into biofuels or polymers that can replace petroleum in manufacture of plastics.
And although half of the industry’s turnover is related to the food and beverage sector, a growing share also comes from new high-value products such as biochemicals, bioplastics, and pharmaceuticals.
“We are moving from niche to normal,” said John Bell, director of the European Commission’s research and innovation department, which oversees the EU’s bioeconomy strategy.
Cake ‘gets smaller and smaller’
Everything will be fine then? Absolutely not.
As demand grows, farmers and foresters are under increased pressure due to competing land uses for food, feed, biomass and other services linked to the bioeconomy.
And that sometimes means trade-offs, the Commission admits.
“We are at a point in time where we have the impression that there is nothing but biomass. It is big – everywhere is biomass,” said Wolfgang Burtscher, director-general of the European Commission’s agriculture department.
“Now, over the years, the cake is getting smaller and smaller. Because biomass is needed for biodiversity, biomass is needed for carbon capture, biomass is needed for feed and food, etc.,” he told the bioeconomy conference on Thursday (6 October).
At some point, the Commission’s report found, this increase in demand for biomass is faced with “ecological limits” where nature cannot provide all these objectives at the same time without harming the environment. .
“We are very exposed to this challenge of land use: with one hectare of land, you have to produce food, you have to produce feed, you have to produce biomass, you have to produce biodiversity, you have to to do carbon capture,” said Burtscher.
“Now, not all of these are necessarily exclusive, but still there are trade-offs,” he warned, highlighting the “ecological boundaries” linked to land use that need to be defined.
‘Doing more with less’
Indeed, how to manage scarce land resources and define ecological boundaries are high among the objectives of the EU’s bioeconomy strategy.
Europe’s future bioeconomy strategy should “pay more attention to how to manage land biomass needs” and make consumption patterns more sustainable, the Commission report said.
“The bioeconomy is about doing more with less,” said Catia Bastioli, CEO of the Italian company Novamont, a world leader in the production of bioplastics and biochemicals. “The paradigm is not economic growth – it is the separation of resources and development. This is the real challenge,” he said at the Commission’s bioeconomy conference.
And to do that, he said the bioeconomy must be rooted in local value chains, which vary greatly within Europe, from the dry Mediterranean in the south to the boreal forests of Northern Finland.
According to Burtscher, the fundamental question at the EU level is who decides how to use scarce natural resources. “For example, you have remnants of the forest. What is the best use of this type of biomass: do you use it for economic purposes or do you leave it in the forest for biodiversity purposes?
“In agriculture, we see that there is a lot of straw that can be used. Can we use it for biofuels or will we use it for more sophisticated products? These are questions that I am personally interested in,” Burtscher said.
John Bell, director of the Commission’s research department, says the EU’s bioeconomy strategy is about addressing trade-offs and making more with less resources.
“How do we do it is the question,” he admits, however, saying that the challenge for economists is to value the ecosystem services provided by the bioeconomy.
“For example, what value do you put and how do you price and reward a farmer with hedgerows who does something about ecological services. Or people who capture carbon in products and services in biomaterial”.
“There’s a Nobel Prize to be won here if someone can make natural capital natural capitalism,” he said.
Ultimately, Bell said, decisions about trade-offs are best made locally. “This is why it is important that people own the future bioeconomy that they want for the territorial level”.
The Commission’s progress report goes in the same direction, saying that more focus should be placed “on better management of land and biomass needs” to address the three dimensions of sustainability – social, economic, and environmental.
“It’s about making peace with nature,” Bell said.
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]
