Today’s post highlights the Industrial Bioenergy
Initiative included in the European Union’s Strategic Energy Technology Plan
(SET-Plan) under the slogan “Boosting the contribution of Bioenergy to the EU
climate and energy ambitions”.
The term Bioenergy is used to designate the
production of heat, electricity and fuels from biological resources, including dedicated
crops, agricultural and forestry residues, and municipal and industrial wastes.
“The SET-Plan Bioenergy Initiative focuses
on innovative value chains which are not yet commercially available, and which
could bring significant contribution to the bioenergy markets by large scale
deployment (large single units or larger number of
smaller units), whilst complying with the sustainability requirements of the Renewable
Energy Directive (2009/28/EC).” A specific complementary activity is also proposed to tackle the
critical issue of biomass supply.
The Industrial Bioenergy Initiative will promote public-private
partnerships to leverage financing and risk management of projects for the implementation
of demonstration plants and of first commercial units
of new value chains (flagship). The demonstration projects are expected to
produce their first commercial contribution by 2015-2020.
Projects
will be selected based on different criteria, including their innovative
nature: at least one “technology brick” or the integration of “technology
bricks” within the considered value chain should not have been deployed at
demonstration or commercial scale before. The seven value chains listed below will
be considered:
a)
Thermochemical pathways
1:
Synthetic liquid fuels and/or hydrocarbons and blending components through
gasification.
2:
Bio-methane and other bio-synthetic gaseous fuels through gasification.
3: High
efficiency heat & power generation through thermochemical conversion
4:
Intermediate bioenergy carriers through techniques such as pyrolysis and
torrefaction
b)
Biochemical pathways
5:
Ethanol and higher alcohols from ligno-cellulosic feedstock through chemical
and biological processes
6:
Hydrocarbons through biological and/or chemical synthesis from biomass
containing carbohydrates
7:
Bioenergy carriers produced by micro-organisms (algae, bacteria) from CO2 and
sunlight
c)
Complementary measures and activities
8:
Biomass feedstock for bioenergy
9: Set
of activities on longer term R&D&D on emerging and innovative bioenergy
value chains
Source: European
Industrial Bioenergy Initiative, Implementation Plan 2010 – 2012, European
Union, 2012.
