Plenary sessions preview

Dear EUBCE Participant,

THE EUBCE 2025 is only 4 weeks away, and we hope you have already registered. To water your appetite to participate and join us in Valencia, we bring you today a “sneak” preview of the plenary talks we scheduled for you on Monday, June 9^th, and Tuesday, June 10^th.

We have three major strands of the EUBCE covered by these plenary sessions, the resources, the policies and the development of intermediate carriers.

The plenary presentations are reasonable generic and address to the non-specialized audience, so whatever is your speciality, it will be worthwhile to attend all of them.

The very first plenary talk on Monday afternoon is titled “Can Agriculture in 2050 Source Enough Biomass for the Bioeconomy?” and given by Berien ELBERSEN from Wageningen Environmental Research in the Netherlands. The title already points to the pressing question of everyone engaged in Bioenergy or Bioenergy at large: There should be enough for us all?¹. Whether or not, and at which conditions or sacrifice, the team from Wageningen will certainly offer you some well justified and elaborated answers. They analysed all agricultural land according to its present and future use to assess trade-offs or synergies between a sustainability goal and biomass production for the bioeconomy. Not surprisingly, the study calls for effective territorial instruments.

Another modeling of future biomass availability is presented under the title “The Role of Biofuels and Bioenergy in the Decarbonisation of the EU Energy System: insights from the POTEnCIA model”. The team of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (Italy and Spain) will report on alternative pathways for the EU’s Energy system. This model predominantly includes the pathways for energy use of biomass, suggesting a significant increase of advanced biofuel consumption by 2050.

It will be interesting to learn from the presentation by Marco BUFFI to which extent bioenergy together with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) will contribute to the final 2050 zero-carbon goal, when bioenergy will continue to play a significant role in electricity and heat generation.

The last plenary talk of this session on Biomass availability will be given by Walter ZEGADA-LIZARAZU who looks in detail on the production feedstock for sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). This biofuel product sees currently a remarkable increase, since airlines are now required to gradually decrease their CO₂ footprint. The team of the University of Bologna (Italy) proposes in their talk titled “Designing Mixed-Cropping Alternatives for the Production of Suitable Feedstock for SAF” to source much of the required feedstock from agricultural byproducts of a mixed set of crops. From the abstract it appears that there is a positive effect on the growth of monocrops, when grown in combination with legume species rather than oilseed crops. Still at a relative low technology level, it promises to assist in the foreseeable difficulty in supplying sustainable feedstock for the tremendous anticipated growth of SAF use.

Quote from the song “Rive Runs Red”, by Midnight Oil, 1990

We are coming now to the first plenary session on Tuesday morning, which will highlight the Policies in place or being necessary for a sustainable bioeconomy, with focus on the crucial aspects of sustainability and accountability within the bio-based industry, particularly concerning biofuels and growing media. We start with the scene-setter given by of Politecnico Torino (Italy), titled “Biomass to Carbon Accounting: Exploiting EU Policies Towards a Common Approach on Sustainable Biofuels”. The common approach which is proposed here considers the multiplicity of uses of Biomass, regarding the climate goals in transport. The presentation will explain what difference it makes to apply carbon accounting either by the volume-based or the footprint calculation. How is the GHG performance affected when calculated by the footprint approach? Moreover, in the study is included the influence of soil carbon on the footprint of biofuel paths. David CHIARAMONTI promises to present some examples, and we are sure that you can profit from some important take-aways.

In the context of footprint accounting, it will be of major importance to establish not only a harmonized approach but also standards to certify the calculation, as it constitutes an important economical factor when it comes to subsidies or penalties in national implementation. It will be very interesting to listen therefor to the talk “International Certification for Sustainable Growing Media”, which will be given by Julia OSTROWSKI of MEO Carbon Solutions (Germany), a consultancy organisation specialized on environmentally and socially responsible supply chains.

The talk will explain HORTICERT, a scheme under which companies have the possibility to decide whether they want to certify the entire quantity of raw materials, growing medium components, or growing media produced, or only a partial quantity. We will hear details on how HORTICERT calculates the he carbons footprint, which allows for statements on the greenhouse gas savings of peat-free and peat-reduced growing media.

The last plenary talk of this session is titled “Revisiting Energy Transition: How Brazil’s Bioenergy Successes Defy Conventional Timelines”. The motivation for this talk lies in an assessment of how innovation in biomass technologies can drive the progress towards the energy transition, which is very heterogenous across different countries. Suani COELHO from the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil) will present quite a few examples, comparing the very advanced use of biomass with the traditional one. It certainly depends on the context and the will, but the talk anticipates how the wide spectrum of biomass usage will contribute to the emission reduction when a pro-active policy reaches out to biomethane, 2^nd generation bio-ethanol, sustainable aviation and maritime fuels. As Brazil is a good example for a decided and long-term strategy on Biomass, we probably all can learn from the presentation.

Our third Plenary, scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, covers the “Recent trends on developing intermediate bioenergy carriers and sustainable biofuels.” This session gives some examples of the vast development which is taking place on intermediate carriers. Why “intermediate”? Well, a lot of processed biomasses can serve for many different uses, in particular when directly replacing petrol-based liquids, solids, and gases. Emphasis is given on talks which valorise waste streams with high efficiency, a largely untapped potential.

Consequently, the first plenary “Hybrid Sustainable Aviation Fuel Production: Integrating E-SAF And Bio-SAF Pathways to Maximize Carbon Efficiency”  sets the scene for the fasted growing bio-liquid sector. The team of CANMET Canada combines bio-SAF production through biomass gasification followed by Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, Marzouk BENALI will explain how such a hybrid solution could enable the scalable production of SAF, the authors claim, and anticipate to solve at least partially the challenge of limited biomass resources and the need for carbon-efficient fuel production.

The next talk will be by Edoardo TITO of the team of Politecnico Torino (Italy), titled “Valorization of Digestate from OFMSW through Hydrothermal Liquefaction”.

They propose to enhance the current, well-established treatment of organic-fraction solid municipal waste (OFSMW) by an additional Hydrothermal Liquefaction. They will demonstrate the advantage by this process when compared to the conventional approach, as it can convert the digestate into biocrude as a suitable substitute for petrol-based fuel oil.

At the end of this session, we will listen to research on biorefineries. “Novel Sn, Ti, and Nb Containing Mixed Oxides as Catalysts for the Valorization of Biorefinery Aqueous Side Streams” is the not very catchy title of the very last talk. Alberto FERNÁNDEZ-ARROYO NARANJO will report how the group of Instituto Tecnología Química (Spain) attempts to increase the efficiency of biomass refinery by using a new catalyst which is made from co-precipitated transition-metal oxides (Sn, Ti and Nb). The advantage would be their superior performance in aqueous effluents as obtained in a fast pyrolysis process. Moreover, these novel catalysts would reduce water consumption during liquid-liquid separation steps of bio-oils.

This very last plenary on Tuesday is certainly not the easiest to understand, but we hope that the authors will engage in addressing an audience of specialists of the wide ecosystem s of the Biomass community.

This ends our “sneak” preview, we are confident that you find it very worthwhile to come to the conference in Valencia.

On Wednesday morning the plenary session will cover the topic “Biogas & Biomethane”. Since the current lack of gas-imports from Russia has put quite some stress on the European energy system, we start in this session with policy related talk.

Biljana KULISIC, of the European Commission bDirectorate-General for Energy, will set the scene with her talk “Shaping the Evidence-based Policy: Biogases Market Uptake Across the EU27”. She will explain how the European Union’s plan RePowerEU shall help to overcome the bottlenecks in gas supply. But she will also explain us the value of local production, in particular for rural areas. The Biomethane Industrial Partnership initiative shall serve to set up the new network to address the issue that currently only 6 member states have a visible biomethane production.

In the second plenary presentation, Urszula SZALKOWSKA, of the Advisory EcoEngineers in Poland, will explain “How Companies Can Utilize Biogenic CO2 to Monetize Credits”. As biogenic CO2 credit opportunities are a quite new subject in the EUBCE, we thank the presenter to have accepted our invitation to brief us on this theme.

Related to the previous presentation on the future CO2 valorisation business, in the third plenary presentation “Valorisation of Biogenic CO2 from Biogas and Biomethane Plants in Europe: Current State and Future Prospects” Jaqueline DANIEL-GROMKE of the German Biomass Research Centre will report about the findings of a project which should demonstrate novel and cost-effective biomethane production solutions and pathways. Considering also Carbon-Capture and Use, she will give an overview about the current markets on CO2 valorisation, and the (relatively low) biogenic share. Besides use in the food and beverages industry, biogenic CO2 is a perfect match with other renewable sources to produce high-quality gases (Power-to-X). We will hear certainly how the current low share of biogenic CO2 would increase in the future, and in general understand CCU processes as an alternative to CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage).

The plenary session of Wednesday afternoon covers industrial biomass applications. The first presentation “Algae, the Strategy to Produce Commodities Under Economically Viable Conditions” by Ricardo ARJONA ANTOLÍN of NESTE, Spain will introduce NESTE’s development of a multi product platform to produce oils for fuels and chemicals as well as proteins for aquafeed/meal. This algae initiative elaborates on setting up new raw materials business, as an intermediate for the customer choice of the final product, as for instance Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs).

Concerning biofuels at large, certainly the second presentation “Biofuel Infrastructure in Transition: Addressing Competing Demands from Road, Aviation, and Maritime Sectors” addresses the increasing markets in these sectors. Jonas ZETTERHOLM of the RISE Research Institutes of Sweden will point out that the demand for Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (HVO) will therefore increase to a level, where new feedstocks need to be utilized. As all three transport sectors will compete for biofuels to achieve the future carbon targets, massive investments in biofuel infrastructure will be a must.

On Thursday afternoon the plenary session will cover the topic “Advances in Biochemical and Biomaterials”. The first presentation by Kathleen MEISEL, DBFZ, entitled High Demand Biopolymers – Technology, Economy & Sustainability, will introduce the GreenFeed project, aimed at transitioning the fossil-based plastics industry to a circular, climate-neutral system using renewable materials. The study identified high-demand biopolymers for petrochemical substitution and evaluated their technical, economic, and environmental aspects compared to conventional polymers. While biopolymers generally have lower greenhouse gas emissions and fossil resource use, they often have higher production costs. However, biobased PBS for HDPE film replacement and biobased PUR show promising overall performance.

The project’s findings offer guidance for the German/European plastics industry and policymakers in achieving climate neutrality and inform future funding.

The second presentation “Softwood Based High Quality Lignin as a Sustainable Raw Material for Greener and Cost-Effective Industrial Applications” by Johanna LAUKKANEN, NordFuel,Finland will discuss the company’s plans to build a bioproduct factory in Haapavesi, Finland, by the end of the decade. The factory will use organosolv fractionation of wood biomass to produce high-quality bioproducts, including lignin. Research on lignin, currently used in resins, suggests that the organosolv process will significantly increase its future applications. This process treats lignocellulosic biomass with organic solvents to separate its components into cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. A study analyzing lignin samples produced with Chempolis’ organosolv technology shows exceptional purity, creating new opportunities for developing novel and most of all cost-effective products from pure softwood-based lignin. We are curious to witness the progress made by Nordfuels regarding the economic viability of producing high-quality bioproducts.

India is actively transitioning to a low-carbon economy with ambitious goals, includingreducing emissions intensity by 45% by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2070. Biofuels play a significant role in achieving these targets. The National biofuel policy -2018 has set the goals and direction in this regard. India has achieved 20% Ethanol blending target ahead of its target well on its way to for higher blends and sale of E100 across the country.

The Biomethane or CBG program is an ambitious program to set up 5000 commercial plants to generate 15MMT of Biomethane which would replace almost 35% of gases derived from fossil fuels. India has also announced its blending targets for SAF. The session will focus on the achievements, challenges being faced and opportunities for technology deployment and investments in India.