Project

BIOSIRKEL

Biosirkel is Western Norway's platform for competence building and collaborative innovation in the field of circular bioeconomy, bringing together research and educational institutions, businesses, the public sector, and society at large. The platform will enable new bioeconomic value chains by connecting actors with waste streams to actors who can benefit from accessing these streams.

Norway aims to be a pioneer in the development of a circular economy, through the better utilisation of resources. Norway has access to water, clean energy and biomass, a strong technological expertise, and thus a solid basis to succeed in a transition to increased sustainability based on bioeconomy. At the same time the transition from a linear to a circular economy will be challenging for individual actors because they are competing with existing industries in established markets. BIOSIRKEL will reduce this risk through systematic interaction for increased circularity.

Project description

BIOSIRKEL aims to contribute to developing and realising green business development and increased circularity across blue, green, and grey sectors. The project will address how Western Norway can succeed in transitioning to more sustainable production and extraction, efficient resource utilisation, utilisation of by-products and waste materials for high-value products, production of new feed resources, and other products.

Key research and development challenges are related to:

  1. Developing collaborative networks and increasing cooperation across sectors.
  2. Improving resource utilization.
  3. Managing economic risks in the transition to a circular economy.
  4. Increasing knowledge about enabling biotechnology and scaling up.
  5. Developing sustainable analyses tailored to biocircular value chains.

Results

The ORL group is part of work package 4 (WP4) which relates to establishing methodologies for evaluating sustainability of processes within the field of biotechnology. The focus is on Life Cycle Assessment of these novel process systems, as well as optimization of the resulting value chains.