Have you ever wondered what is the bioeconomy? Why would it bring any value in Ireland?
The InformBio team wanted to share with Irish stakeholders the importance of Bioeconomy as a way to celebrate the first year of the project.
The bioeconomy is a part of the economy which focuses on renewable materials or biological origin, which include animals, plants, micro-organisms, and derived biomass and organic waste generated from those. Everything that is alive, or has been alive, falls into this description.
The aim of a bioeconomy is to use these biological resources to produce food, feed, bio-based products, energy and services, while at the same time, reducing waste and emissions.
Ireland has great potential in this sense. Up until 2019, the bioeconomy at European level has brought an average of 135k€ turnover per person, while in Ireland this has been 303k€ turnover per person, more than double the EU average.
In the infographic, the InformBio team shows the figures for employment created and turnover generated thanks to the bioeconomy, to highlight the potential that exists in the country.
This potential can and will be supported by the work InformBio is developing. During the first year of the project, the team focused on two big activities and tools. The first one, developing a database of biomass arisings, showing information on Irish feedstock arisings. And the second one, the environmental risk tool, which offers an early assessment of environmental risks to develop new bio-based value chains and future policies related to specific feedstocks.
Both are interlinked, while the map shows the current situation of biomasses, the environmental risk tool gives the opportunity to study what to do, in a sustainable matter, with the current biomass available.
Keep posted to find more about the mapping and the environmental risk tool in the future! InformBio partners will use these tools to support a bioeconomy foresight study to understand the bioeconomy pathways to support Ireland in achieving its 2050 emissions reduction targets. The work will also feed into the projects work in developing a national bioeconomy monitoring framework to measure and analyse the progress of Ireland’s bioeconomy.
