Best practice examples: Deliverable 3.4

The bioeconomy transition is routed in new opportunities with high potential of replication at EU level. To this end, it is important to identify which measures could potentially have a high impact on the biobased economy. Theoretically, several measures have been agreed to support stable and appealing markets for biobased products, such as fossil carbon tax, a CO2 tax, quotas, tax credits, removal of fossil subsidies and, mandates and bans. Nevertheless, there are also other actions, namely “soft measures” which could also be very fruitful in the development of sustainable activities towards long-term bioeconomy initiatives in the field of increasing public awareness. These “soft” measures are regarded as easy to implement in the current political climate. Among others, the adoption of bio-based products can answer the call from the public and politicians for concrete measures from the EU and its Member States for more climate-friendly products. An enhanced bio-based economy has an important role to play in meeting the ambition of the 2015 Paris Agreement and in delivering the European Green Deal. The POWER4BIO project counts on learning from experiences. Examples and references might speed up the decision made at national and regional level, which will enable a stronger commitment towards solutions under the concept of bioeconomy. To this end, policy makers urge to gain access to reliable reference sources of information to use these sources in their internal procedures. Furthermore, the detailed description of existing cases is an instrumental key to learn and inspire new initiatives. The regions oversee the state of the art and point out the value of being informed of initiatives which are successful with new business model. As a matter of fact, the POWER4BIO regions have arisen the need of a catalogue of technologies in real production cases (Deliverable D3.3) but in some specific cases, more technical information is required to foster and boost regional bioeconomy actions. This is the aim of this deliverable D3.4, were a thorough analysis, selection and description of the best practices of biorefineries worldwide is included. In the context of the POWER4BIO project, best practices are industrial production sites, which use specific biomass sources to produce biobased products. This deliverable pays special attention to two elements: rural application of the selected biorefineries and their competitivity. Furthermore, aligned with deliverables D3.3 and D4.1 of the project, the solutions are classified in 4 categories, in view to its application, such as, bioenergy, biochemicals, feed&food and biomaterials. This classification allows for an easy to understand and use of the cases detailed depicted in this document. In total, 12 EU best practices, 3 of each of the 4 categories are included in this report. The information per best practices include the minimum information to illustrate the cases. They provide the reader with information to consider its potential for replicability. Lastly, all the cases have been harmonised content-wise so as to facilitate the understanding and comparison of examples. POWER4BIO project (818351) Page 6 of 62 Deliverable 3.4: Best practice examples Version 1.0, 27/03/2020 POWER4BIO www.power4bio.eu) collaborates with the Horizon 2020 project BE-Rural, which also assesses technology options and business models for regional and local bio-based economies. A joint guidance document will summarise the relevant outputs of the two projects and provide concrete recommendations for policy-makers regarding the application of bio-based technology options and business models in specific regional contexts. The present report will contribute to this joint output. For further complementary information from the BE-Rural project, we encourage the reader to visit: https://be-rural/results/