What is it about?

The emerging bio-based industry in Europe is taking shape thanks to its many value chains, either built on existing value chains from the participating industrial sectors, or afresh, from new partnerships across sector boundaries. As the industry progresses, the existing situation offers opportunities to (further) improve existing value chains by integrating breakthrough technologies where applicable. The targeted improvement could be higher performance, lower costs, and/or enhanced sustainability.

The specific challenge of this topic is to identify possible technological improvements to existing value chains when breakthrough technologies are included.

Scope:

Adapt, and when needed, further develop innovative technologies for integration into an existing bio-based value chain to improve its performance in terms of efficiency, yield, cost and/or sustainability.

Proposals should describe the current bottleneck(s) and how the introduction of the new technological solutions could help enhance the technical performance and bring down costs, and/or reduce the environmental footprint.

This topic focuses on completely new breakthrough game-changing technologies. It excludes incremental innovations and continuous improvement.

Proposals should commit to assessing the environmental impacts of the developed processes or products using LCA methodologies based on available standards, certification, accepted and validated approaches (see also introduction – section 2.2.5 – published in the BBI JU AWP 2018)1.

Proposals should also include an economic viability performance check (value chain and market analysis) of the developed products and processes, along with an analysis of social impacts where applicable.

If relevant, proposals should also allow for pre- and co-normative research necessary for developing the needed product quality standards.

The technology readiness level (TRL) 2 at the end of the project should be at least 3 for the bio-based value chain in question. Proposals should clearly state the starting TRL, which may be as low as 1 or 2.

The scope aims at assisting industry to further explore promising technologies to broaden and strengthen the bio-based industries in Europe. It also aims at reducing the environmental footprint of the total value chain.

Submission deadline: 6 September 2018, 17:00 CET

Budget:

The total eligible costs (direct and indirect) are reimbursed, depending on the specific action funding rate:

• Research and Innovation Action: 100%;
• Innovation Action: 70%;
• Coordination and Support Action: 100%

The indirect eligible costs (e.g. administration, communication and infrastructure costs, office supplies) are reimbursed with a 25% flat rate of the direct eligible costs with the exclusion of subcontracting costs.

 Eligibility of the applicants:

The following participants are eligible for funding from the Union:

• any legal entity established in a Member State or associated country, or created under Union Law
• any international European interest organisation;
• any legal entity established in a third country identified in the Work Programme.

Furthermore, participants should comply with the following consortium eligibility criteria:

• RIA and IA:
• three legal entities;
• each of the three shall be established in a different Member State or Associated Country;
• all three legal entities shall be independent of each other.
• CSA: one legal entity established in a Member State or Associated Country;