nova-Experts (re)introduced: Niels de Beus (M.Sc. Biotechnology)

Sustainability Assessment

Niels is part of the nova team for over 10 years. After joining the institute in 2015 as an intern, he completed his Master’s Degree in Biotechnology at Wageningen University and became an expert in nova’s sustainability team. As a part of our sustainability department, Niels focusses on Life Cycle Assessment, process evaluation, Techno-Economic Evaluation and more holistic sustainability assessments for a wide variety of products and processes. Niels has worked on assessments covering agricultural (side)-products and value chains, biotechnological processes and more recently on the evaluation of Carbon Capture and Utilisation processes, alongside consultation of clients. Niels provides his expertise in both R&D projects as well as industry consulting, analysing production processes and value chains to support decision making.

Niels can support you through helping you understand the environmental performance of your technology, identification of hotspots and development of sustainable strategies, regardless of the state of the technology. Furthermore, Niels his experience and background in process engineering enables him to model processes to fill data gaps and translate R&D to larger scales. Finally, Niels also has experience with standardised assessments such as ISO-compliant LCAs as well as Environmental Product Declarations (EPD).

Background and expertise

With a background in biotechnology and a specialisation in bio-process engineering, Niels conducts Life Cycle Assessments and other assessments such as Social Life Cycle Assessments and Techno-Economic Assessments. Over the years Niels has participated in numerous national and EU funded projects, such as CATCO₂NVERS, PULP2Value, HICCUPS, BioCOnversion, ReCO2NWert, BioMonitor and BioRECO₂VER covering a variety of topics from Carbon Capture and Utilisation, agricultural side-product valorisation to biorefineries. Niels’ focusses more on process evaluation (both from sustainability and economic point of view), consultation for industrial clients as well as methodological topics related to the conduction of Life Cycle Assessments.