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The Northern Netherlands

The Northern Netherlands is an unique environment for sustainably-minded (bio)chemical businesses due to the regional availability of renewable feedstock, energy and existing infrastructure as well as the proximity to excellent knowledge centers and upscaling facilities. Within the last decades, several developments unravelled in the biobased circular transition. Exploring how these developments were initiated, the article means to show the opportunities that this region has to offer today. It also makes a strong argument for the economic potential arising from the creative combination of available feedstocks in an innovative ecosystem providing necessary frame-work conditions and fostering close intersectoral collaboration.

Transition bioeconomy

Biobased Building Materials

In the housing market enormous challenges exist for the retrofitting of existing housing in combination with the ambition to realize new environmentally friendly and affordable dwellings. Bio-based building materials offer the possibility to use renewable resources in building and construction. The efficient use of bio-based building materials is desirable due to several potential advantages related to environmental and economic aspects e.g. CO2 fixation and additional value. The potential biodegradability of biomaterials however demands also in-novative solutions to avoid e.g. the use of environmental harmful substances. It is essential to use balanced technological solutions, which consider aspects like service life or technical per-formance as well as environmental aspects. Circular economy and biodiversity also play an im-portant role in these concepts and potential production chains. Other questions arise considering the interaction with other large biomass users e.g. food production. What will be the impact if we use more bio-based building materials with regard to biodiversity and resource availability? Does this create opportunities or risks for the increasing use of bio-based building materials or does intelligent use of biomass in building materials offer the possibility to apply still unused (bio) resources and use them as a carbon sink? Potential routes of intelligent usage of biomass as well as potential risks and disadvantages are highlighted and discussed in relation to resource efficiency and decoupling concept(s).

CIRcular transition through COLLABoration in the metropolitan region Amsterdam

Nederland wil in 2050 circulair zijn. Dat vraagt een ongekende transitie in de wijze waarop onze samenleving onderneemt, samenwerkt, denkt en doet.Stedelijke regio’s zijn de geijkte plek om een transitie naar een circulaire economie in gang te zetten door hun dichte concentratie van kennis, kapitaal, data en resources op een relatief klein oppervlak. De baten die deze transitie oplevert zullen vooral in deze regio’s merkbaar zijn: minder verspilling, luchtvervuiling en CO2-uitstoot, meer economische waarde en sociale impact.CirCollab richt zich op het versterken van interdisciplinair praktijkgericht onderzoek voor de circulaire transitie in de metropoolregio Amsterdam (MRA). De SPRONG-groep bestaat uit lectoraten verbonden aan Centre of Expertise City Net Zero en Center of Expertise Rechtvaardige Stad vanuit de faculteiten Techniek, Maatschappij en Recht, Business & Economie en Digitale Media & Creatieve Industrie (Hogeschool van Amsterdam); het Kenniscentrum Maatschappelijk Innovatie Flevoland (Hogeschool Windesheim); en de Academie van Bouwkunst (Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten).De SPRONG-groep combineert expertise vanuit het technologische, creatieve, economische en sociale domein en verricht praktijkgericht onderzoek naar ‘circulair denken en doen’, ‘circulair ondernemen’, ‘circulair menselijk kapitaal’ en ‘circulair samenwerken’ in relatie tot technische innovaties in twee waardeketens: de gebouwde omgeving en consumptiegoederen.De SPRONG-groep ontwikkelt, samen met actoren in de quadruple helix, een regionale infrastructuur voor inventariseren en prioriteren van onderzoeksbehoeften en het programmeren, opbouwen en uitwisselen van kennis. Hierbij worden kennis en ervaringen uit circulaire initiatieven, experimenten, onderzoek en onderwijs aan elkaar en aan fysieke experimenteerruimtes verbonden, om gezamenlijk van te leren, kennis te delen en op te schalen. Zo ontstaat een krachtige interdisciplinaire SPRONG-groep met de ambitie om het consortium uit te laten groeien tot dé regionale spil op het gebied van de circulaire transitie in grootstedelijke regio’s en een erkende (inter)nationale speler voor kennisuitwisseling en -opbouw op dit onderwerp.

Power to the people

Abstract: The transition towards renewable and sustainable energy is being accompanied by a transformation of communities and neighbourhoods. This transition may have huge ramifications throughout society. Many cities, towns and villages are putting together ambitious visions about how to achieve 100% sustainable energy, energy neutrality, zero carbon emission or zero-impact of their communities. We investigate what is happening at the local community level towards realizing these ambitions from a social perspective. We use the case study approach to answer the following question: how do local community energy initiatives contribute to a decentralized sustainable energy system? We find that especially the development of a shared vision, the level of activities and the type of organisation are important factors of the strength of the ‘local network’.

Trends and developments in the renewable energy sector in Ukraine

The government of Ukraine has adopted the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) with clear goals and a roadmap to facilitate its energy transition towards renewable sources. This is done because of both climate concerns as well as reasons related to Ukraine’s foreign policy which led the government to decide that Ukraine should work more on its own energy independence. Currently the percentage of renewable energy sources in Ukraine is among the lowest of the entire Europe and there is only slow development in terms of the growth of the sector, even though there is a lot of available biomass, given the large and flat surface of the country with a well-developed agricultural sector. As in most countries in the world, there is a quite intensive and well-developed debate in Ukraine about the energy sector, energy usage and the necessary transition towards more renewable types of energy. One of the consequences of it is that Ukraine is one of the partner countries in the Paris agreement and committed itself to reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the future. That means that a transformation towards renewable energy is needed, even though currently in Ukraine only a low percentage of energy is generated by sustainable sources. The general picture is that in Ukraine the development of the renewable energy sector is going not as fast as could have been. In other words, there are several barriers present that hinder the energy transition. One of the issues behind such a barrier may be a limited access to technology, or problems with legislation or other issues which may be unknown so far, but certainly relevant for foreign investors. The Ukrainian government adopted the so-called Renewable Energy Directive (RED), set goals for the energy transition and support the transition itself. In some areas progress was made, for example in the growing number of biomass fired boilers, but still Ukraine remains one of the European countries with the lowest percentage of renewable energy production. Therefore, in order to identify currently existing barriers and help to find possible applications of new technologies in Ukraine, the Dutch Enterprise Agency (Rijksdienst voor Ondernemerschap) commissioned this study. It was done within the framework of the Partners in Business on Bioenergy program. The focus of this study is on analysing the renewable energy sector, with special attention for biomass, in the form of biomass-based heating and biomass for biofuels. Of course, other parts of the renewable energy sector such as solar and wind energy are also taken into consideration. The second part consists of a case study to determine the business case for direct processing of sugar beets with Betaprocess as a possible application of biomass to biofuel production in Ukraine. The third study is aiming at determining the amount of biomass that can safely be taken from the fields, without negatively affecting the fertility of the soil. These sub-studies mentioned in the previous paragraph offer a better understanding of the renewable energy market in general and biomass/biofuel applications in particular. This study sheds light on several important questions that entrepreneurs and/or other foreign investors may have about investing in Ukraine. Even though it is well-known that doing business in Ukraine is challenging, it is also very important to have a clear picture of the opportunities that this country offers, within the limits that nature sets, in order to avoid negative consequences like soil degradation. The objective of this report is to find out about which opportunities and barriers exist in the Ukrainian transition towards renewable energy generation, to calculate the profitability of new biomass-processing technologies as well as finding out limitations of biomass usage.