Whereas world capacity for biobased chemicals and materials is rapidly growing, Europe clearly lags behind. Lux Research, a Boston based company, expects a doubling of global biobased capacity in 2017 to 13.2 Mton. But Europe’s share will drop from 37% … Read more
One of the discussion themes in the corridors of the World Bio Markets conference in Amsterdam last week, was industry-government relationships. Major European biobased industries feel frustrated that they invest in other continents, whereas they received so much support from … Read more
‘Socialise the risks and privatise the gains’ has been the reigning economic principle in the financial world in the past few years. Now such a mechanism also appears to be functioning in the much less murky innovation process. And here … Read more
We are right in the middle of the most radical transition that our society can go through: that of a centralistic, fossil-fuelled society to a much more decentralised society mainly on the basis of local resources. Different observers, dependent on … Read more
The Dutch Scientific and Technological Committee for the biobased economy (WTC) has published its second and last report. Elsewhere on this site, we will go into the committee’s recommendations, intended to turn the Netherlands into a green society. Here something … Read more
Sorry, we publish this column on Dutch innovation policy in Dutch only.
Sustainable supply chains are of great importance for the biobased economy, in terms of environmental conditions and respect for biodiversity, and also on issues of improving working conditions and farmers’ incomes. In recent years, many labels have been created for … Read more
Europe’s biofuel policy has been reformulated earlier this year, in order to promote the development of second-generation biofuels. But this seems to have little effect: whereas second-generation biofuels from food wastes are indeed being produced in Europe, there is just … Read more
On August 18, we started a discussion on the development towards a smaller scale in the biobased economy. We continued this discussion in a LinkedIn group connected to www.biobasedeconomy.nl. What was the outcome of this discussion? The reason why we … Read more
‘A mandatory percentage of biofuels in the national fuel mix does not make sense. In forces consumers onto a market they are not interested in. A mandatory blend is a relic from a centrally planned economy.’ Says Michiel Keyzer, an … Read more
Whereas last year, EFIB was still under the aegis of high hopes on this new phenomenon, the biobased economy, this year in Brussels the main sentiment was ‘this is the time for Europe, otherwise others will take the lead’. There … Read more
A week after IPCC’s publication of the summary of its latest report, EFIB started, the European Forum for Industrial Biotechnology. We feel that sustainability is an important driving force for the biobased economy, and hence we wondered how biotechnological companies … Read more
Sorry, we publish this article on Dutch innovation policy only in Dutch.
The European Parliament has decided. The share of biofuels in the fuel mix will be reduced from 10 to 6% in 2020. Is that disastrous or beneficial, on the contrary? And why? According to European figures, biofuels would contribute a … Read more
Subsidies play a difficult but unavoidable part in the stimulation of new technologies. With subsidies, new and superior technologies can compete with incumbent technologies. Subsidies protect them temporarily from the chilly force of the market. But subsidies, so it appears, … Read more
Whereas many biotechnological companies pursue patents that allow them to valorise their knowledge, the US Supreme Court recently ruled that DNA sequences in nature (or parts thereof) are not patentable as such. This requires the biotech community to rethink the … Read more
Many researchers claim that the biobased economy will be organised at a smaller scale than the present economy. On this website we held the same opinion. Chemical plants would become smaller, and located more closely to their feedstock supplier (agriculture). … Read more
Even though the biobased economy may incur a smaller scale of operations, there is room for cooperation in larger areas. The Biobased Delta may become a fine example of that. Now merely in the South-western part of the Netherlands, and … Read more
‘We passed the 400 ppm CO2 mark in the air this year, and it will not stop there. To put things into perspective: in 1960 we passed the 300 ppm level. What should we do now? Produce virtually CO2-free products. … Read more
European plastics manufacturers have joined NGOs in their stand for an EU-wide ban on the disposal of plastics in landfills. They argue that Europe needs tougher recycling requirements to stop an important raw material from being thrown away, and see … Read more
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Willem Sederel, manager of the Biobased Delta, situated in the South-western part of the Netherlands, shows no doubt as he indicates the biobased economy as the prime development model for the future green industry. But he also says: ‘We are … Read more
Stimulation of the biobased economy can be done in many ways. Even without subsidies. As a part of its innovation policy, the Dutch government in 2011 called into existence the Green Deals, an ‘intention agreement between government and society without … Read more
Sorry, this column on Dutch innovation policy and biobased SMEs is only available in Dutch.
Generals always seem to be engaged in winning the last war; likewise, the recently installed Dutch Council for the Environment and Infrastructure (RLI), has issued a report on yesterday’s problems. The subject is the conflict between sustainability and agriculture. The … Read more
There is a firm trend for centralization in decision making in our society. National governments increase their power at the expense of communities and counties; and Europe acts for more ‘harmonization’ of national regulation. As a result of this process, … Read more
Sorry, this column on Dutch innovation policy is only available in Dutch.
Even though our highly technological society is vulnerable, this state of affairs is not much addressed by politics or societal debate. And vulnerable we are indeed. Think of the millennium bug. We depend completely on infrastructures on a regional, national … Read more
Five years after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, nothing has been done yet on the set of measures which were thought to be essential at the time; measures which boil down to reinstalling the protection of financial markets, installed after the … Read more
Shale gas is not a threat, it is an opportunity. The whole world will benefit from US coal fired power stations to shift to natural gas, thereby appreciably reducing their CO2 emissions. And Europe should act appropriately in return: by … Read more
In Brussels, civil servants are in the middle of a major project: the revision of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy, CAP. The future of the biobased economy is heavily dependent on the smart design of this policy. It is of major … Read more
World food reserves are very low. Reserves now amount to two months; strategic oil reserves amount to at least three months. Such low reserves are made possible by major achievements in JIT and logistics; they tend to decline ever further, … Read more
Canada and China are about to sign a trade agreement which would allow China to develop tar sands in Alberta in exchange for enhanced protection of Canadian companies in China. The draft agreement is the subject of a heated debate, … Read more
It was a wonderful reunion, Forty years of wind power in the Netherlands, organized by Chris Westra, the man whose self-built wind turbine in 1972 marked the beginning of an upsurge of sustainable energy. Many stories about the past forty … Read more
Let nobody accuse the European Commission of not engaging itself in what it calls the bioeconomy. Last month, the Commission held a kind of hearing on the part played by regions in Europe’s bioeconomy. It did not have a fixed … Read more
Certification. That was the common denominator in many contributions to the discussion in my group at the ‘Social aspects of bio-based chemicals’ meeting in Amsterdam, Friday 2 November. And cooperation. And the ambition to excel. The question was, what my … Read more
‘Look, this is the picture which made me decide to do something about it,’ says Peter Smith, a photographer living in Amsterdam. ‘Which river do you think this is?’ ‘The Maas.’ The picture was taken by Peter Driessen in the … Read more
Sorry, this article on Dutch innovation policy is only available in Dutch.
‘You always want to employ the perfect technology right away’, the Americans mirrored us, Europeans, at the occasion of last week’s EFIB final debate, in Düsseldorf. Where EFIB is the acronym for: European Forum for Industrial Biotechnology and the Biobased … Read more
‘We should again valorise the entire potato.’ In one sentence, AVEBE’s ambition in the biobased economy. In order to realize this goal, the corporation has many ideas for opportunities in research. ‘More than we can finance. We will have to … Read more
Sorry, this column on Dutch innovation policy is only available in Dutch.
It was a historic site, in café Landtmann in Vienna, where the European Liberal Forum had organized our debate on the green economy. Historic, not merely because the café exists from 1873 onwards, and because a large number of famous … Read more
The bioeconomy is regional in nature, and now Europe has discovered that, too. At a ‘hearing’ in Brussels it became apparent that the new wealth will be rural in nature, and will be created locally. The region will take preference … Read more
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The biobased industry is going to alleviate the CO2 problem and create rural employment and development. Says Lars Hansen, President Region Europe of Novozymes, one of the main European companies in the development of the biobased economy. But Europe should … Read more
The European Commission may renounce its former renewable fuel directive, and plans to lower the required renewable fuel percentage from 10 to 5%. The ethanol industry is furious, and accuses the Commission of an ‘irresponsible U-turn on biofuels policy’. Could … Read more
Item in the discussion series on shale gas on this site. The European Parliament Environmental Committee is of the opinion that member states should be prudent in drilling for shale gas, until better data are available about risks. According to … Read more
We barely published an article intended to open up a discussion on the effect of cheap shale gas on the biobased economy ( September 2012), when Amory Lovins and Jon Creyts of the Rocky Mountain Institute published a column ‘Hot … Read more
We all know that ‘Big Oil’ is not fond of green chemistry and the green economy. But biobased chemists trust that crude oil prices will keep rising, dragging along natural gas prices on their way. This would advance the production … Read more
