Wassup, EU? The Top 10 Trends in Europe’s Advanced Bioeconomy
In the EU, the European bioeconomy is generating 18.3 million jobs and driving €2.1 trillion in annual revenue in the E28, says nova-insitut, in a report for the Bio-based Industries Consortium.
If we had any doubt about the EU’s commitment to moving forward, we saw that the Danish Minister for Business & Growth and the Minister for Energy, Utilities, & Climate announced his intent to set a binding target for advanced biofuel use in transportation of 0.9% in energy content by 2020.
The government wants to underpin a Danish production of advanced biofuels by way of establishing a blending requirement of 0.9% advanced biofuels in the energy content for transport. 0.9% in all transport fuels is equivalent to 2.5% in gasoline only. The development in Denmark follows an earlier, similar agreement in Italy.
“This is a positive step to further increase Denmark’s use of sustainable biofuels instead of fossil fuels. Denmark already blends 5% bioethanol in its gasoline and will now also add ethanol from waste. Blending mandates like this are critical to further cut CO2 emissions from transport.” said Novozymes Vice President, Sebastian Søderberg:
The EU bioeconomy as a whole
The bioeconomy comprises those parts of the economy that use renewable biological resources from land and sea – such as crops, forests, fish, animals and micro-organisms – to produce food, materials and energy.
Roughly half of the revenue is accounted for by the food and beverages sector, almost a quarter is created by the primary sectors, agriculture and forestry. The other quarter is created by the bio-based industrial sector, such as chemicals and plastics, pharmaceuticals, paper and paper products, forest-based industries, textile sector, biofuels and bioenergy.
Eurostat was used as the main source of data for all sectors of the bioeconomy. Some sectors, such as the forest-based industry, are fully bio-based and thus fully accounted to the bioeconomy. For other sectors such as the chemical industry, the bio-based shares were estimated and included in the data.
Background Reading
The Digest’s Guide to France in the Advanced Bioeconomy
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