{"id":25301,"date":"2015-04-01T03:30:06","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T01:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=25301"},"modified":"2015-03-31T16:12:08","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T14:12:08","slug":"the-john-bell-interview-the-reaction-of-michael-carus-ceo-of-nova-institut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/the-john-bell-interview-the-reaction-of-michael-carus-ceo-of-nova-institut\/","title":{"rendered":"The John Bell interview: the reaction of Michael Carus, Ceo of nova-Institut"},"content":{"rendered":"

We receive and publish with pleasure this comment by Michael Carus, managing director of the nova-Institut, regarding our exclusive interview with John Bell<\/a>, Director of Bioeconomy Directorate, European Commission.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We are glad to promote the debate.<\/p>\n

\"michael-carus-new\"
Michael Carus, managing director of the nova-Institut. Copyright: nova-Institut 2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dear Mario,<\/p>\n

with interest, we read your interview with John Bell. While we were glad to read that DG RTD is now somewhat recognizing the adverse effects of the RED, we found the later parts of the\u00a0statement concerning the RED still too short-sighted. They make clear why the sector of chemicals and materials is developing so slowly and why we are losing shares of worldwide investment.<\/p>\n

We would like to comment on two aspects:<\/p>\n

John Bell\u00a0stated about the RED that it is: \u201cencouraging investments in technologies, logistics and infrastructure that have the potential to be used for material as well as energy uses\u00a0of biomass.\u00a0From this perspective, the RED might be seen as a useful catalyst for the development of the bioeconomy as a whole.\u201c<\/p>\n

This seems only true for a very limited range of chemicals, mainly ethanol and ethylen-based drop-in chemicals.\u00a0Producing\u00a0via ethanol and ethylen means to have a very low biomass utilization\u00a0efficiency compared to new pathways. Especially new process pathways to new bio-based building blocks and high value applications do not profit from the investment in lignocellulosic ethanol\u00a0production at all. Going this way, huge potentials\u00a0of\u00a0high-value chemicals, materials with new properties and also cellulose fibres\u00a0are\u00a0missed and realized outside\u00a0of\u00a0Europe.<\/p>\n

And also, even if the statement\u00a0was\u00a0true, we\u00a0would need\u00a0to change the RED and the framework nevertheless. Without incentives, and that is proven\u00a0in different economic calculations, a\u00a0biorefinery would produce mainly chemicals and almost no fuels, especially no bioethanol. Only the RED incentives lead the biorefineries to produce mainly bioethanol. To change this and\u00a0make biorefineries less dependent on subsidies, we have to change the RED!<\/p>\n

John Bell stated further:\u00a0\u201cbiorefineries will increasingly be able to process biomass in a cascading approach favouring highest value added and resource efficient products.\u201d<\/p>\n

According\u00a0to most of the cascading definitions, a biorefinery is not part of a cascade, but an optimized coupled production as a starting point for a cascade. And \u201chighest value added and\u00a0resource efficient products\u201c only have a chance, if there is no framework such as the RED, favouring only bioenergy and biofuels and putting bio-based chemicals in a less favourable position.<\/p>\n

It remains true: The real bio-based economy with high value chemicals and less dependency\u00a0on incentives can only develop,\u00a0if the RED framework will be heavily reformed.\u00a0It is true that the\u00a0existing infrastructure is a strong point of the European Union, but it will be dangerous to rest on these achievements and leave everything as it is. The current structures need to be expanded\u00a0and transformed, and not only after 2020 or even 2030 \u2013 by then, investments will have gone elsewhere.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

More Information<\/h3>\n

Please take a look to our nova-Paper #4 on bio-based economy: \u201cProposals for a Reform of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) to a Renewable Energy and Materials Directive (REMD)\u201d (http:\/\/bio-based.eu\/nova-papers<\/a>)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We receive and publish with pleasure this comment by Michael Carus, managing director of the nova-Institut, regarding our exclusive interview with John Bell, Director of Bioeconomy Directorate, European Commission. We are glad to promote the debate. Dear Mario, with interest, we read your interview with John Bell. While we were glad to read that DG […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[],"supplier":[2317,5585,4],"class_list":["post-25301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","supplier-european-commission","supplier-european-union","supplier-nova-institut-gmbh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25301"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=25301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}