On Monday April 29th a working group with EU regional and local authorities representatives was held to discuss BIOTRANSFORM’s tools and methodologies developed to support transitioning to circular bioeconomy. Other EU projects focusing on circular bioeconomy research and technology institutes and bioeconomy clusters also participated in the online session providing their valuable insights and expertise.
The session started with presenting the BIOTRANSFORM methodology to co-define and co-implement optimal transition pathways by the consortium partner alchemia-nova. The presentation was, followed by discussion to identify the participants’ knowledge, needs and perceptions on the tools and methodologies available for transitioning to circular bioeconomy.
Most workshop participants were aware of and familiar with specific tools and methodologies, such as SWOT analysis, System Dynamics Modelling and the CCRI methodology.
The workshop also explored how local actors collaborate and coordinate, in different EU regions, in matters related to circular bioeconomy. The participants’ responses were not uniform and included responses such as: 1) a dedicated bioeconomy cluster; 2) the integration of bioeconomy into regional thematic working groups of food system transformation and digital technologies and 3) the regional committee on environment, to discuss circular bioeconomy along with other topics.
These findings confirm the great diversity of regional governance approaches, and the strong link and interconnections of circular bioeconomy with various topics, integrated in transversal subjects.
During the workshop, BIOTRANSFORM’s partner LIST presented the impact assessment tool (developed in WP2 ) that is following a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach and its application  for the Finnish case-study. This case-study is focusing on lignin extraction from the paper and pulp industry and its valorisation to produce Anode, adhesives and plasticizers. The participants provided valuable insights and feedback on the assessment tool and  highlighted the importance of the associated indicators (environmental, social, economic) from the stakeholders’ point of view to support decision making .
According to the workshop participants, the most useful and valuable indicators were as follows: 1)Â Environmental indicators on energy resources, climate change and material resources 2) Economic indicators on resource efficiency, job loss/creation and employment in the primary sector and 3) Social indicators on local employment, safe and healthy living conditions, knowledge creation and capacity building in rural areas.
Most participants indicated that they would recommend to other regional authorities such an LCA approach to select the transition pathway for their regional economy. However, participants pointed out that selecting pathways for biomass use, can be very challenging within an LCA approach due to the wide array of possible pathways - performing such comparisons can be a very complex and overwhelming process.
To address this limitation of an LCA and at the same time target regional priorities, in our approach we combine regional challenges and stakeholder opinions using a multicriteria table to identify the three best options for biomass valorisation. Once the three best pathways are identified, we then use LCA to estimate the impact of bio-based methods relative to conventional methods and perform comparisons among the three transition pathways to evaluate the most efficient use of biomass.
This interactive workshop provided useful feedback for the BIOTRANSFORM project and the development of each tools and methodologies.  The outcomes of the meeting will be utilized to better align our activities and developments with the needs of potential end-users.
The working group will be mobilised once more towards the end of the 2nd year of the project to fine-tune our final results with the needs of policy-makers and regional actors in support of circular bioeconomy transitioning.
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