How sustainable is the EU's production scheme?

How much is Europe investing in the bioeconomy today, and just what state are those sectors in? The scientific and technical arm of the EC now has a dedicated website to regularly assess progress in this area.

Bioeconomy is the sustainable production and exploitation of biological resources, which will allow the production of more from less, including wastes.

JRC's new website will follow investments in research, innovation and skills, and the mapping of policy initiatives at European and national levels.

It will also hone in on bioeconomy profiles for EU Member States and regions, socio-economic analysis of bio-based value chains and the environmental sustainability assessment of bio-based products. 

Information will soon be available for key international partners 

Data and information are grouped along the three key pillars highlighted in the EU bioeconomy strategy: research (i.e. investments in research, innovation and skills); policy (i.e. reinforced policy interaction and stakeholder engagement) and markets (i.e. enhancement of markets and competitiveness in bioeconomy).

The creation of the bioeconomy website was foreseen in the EU's bioeconomy strategy and will supply policy-makers and stakeholders with reference data and analyses, providing a solid basis for policy development and decision-making.

Information and data are currently collected at EU, Member States and regional levels. Eventually, they will also be available for key international partners such as Brazil, Malaysia or the USA.

Further JRC research into bioeconomy

In this context, the JRC reports it will continue to analyse the bioeconomy sector.

It points to a new report that assesses the strengths of the different related sectors in EU countries. It focuses on the traditional bio-based agricultural and food sectors, but also on new bioeconomic activities, in this way, helping to reduce the lack of available data, which is usually highly aggregated in the EU.

Meanwhile, another report consists in a modelling exercise where several bio-based applications and their use of biomass are compared in terms of efficiency to their conventional counterparts in the year 2030.

According to its assumptions, the production of second generation biofuels and biochemicals were the most competitive options when compared to conventional counterparts.