Fig 1. The value chain approach and activities of BECOOL.
International Scientific Cooperation The activities of BECOOL were aligned with the activities of BioValue, a twin project in Brazil, funded by Brazilian State Funding Agencies and companies, to diversify the biomass production chains and logistics of advanced biofuels in Brazil, with a focus on aviation biofuels. Building on existing complementarities in scientific expertise and experience, the two projects adopted a synergistic work programme and developed a series of joint research and demonstration activities on various aspects, such as the agricultural profiles of Southern Europe and Brazil, joint papers on integrated food and bioenergy cropping systems, collaborations for the improvements of sugarcane mechanized harvesting, catalyst development, analytical methods, process efficiency of sugarcane biorefineries and the sustainability assessment of integrated EU-Brazil Fischer Tropsch value chains. During the lifetime of BECOOL substantial changes emerged in the European and global context. The new Commission’s programme launched in 2019, grounded on the achievement of climate neutrality by 2050, the Green Deal and the related Fit for 55 Package, highlighted Europe’s commitment towards the decarbonization of transport. At the same time, the Green Deal objectives also reinforced the importance of protecting biodiversity, enhancing soil health and other cross-cutting aspects, and well desgined sustainable biomass value chains can contribute significantly to these goals. Even though the outbreak of the COVID- 19 pandemic complicated the work of research teams and the organization of physical meetings, the BECOOL project managed to carry out its planned activities, delivering a series of results that are scientifically and industrially valuable. This publication presents a summary of the main results obtained by the different research components of the project and their relevance for the current context of biofuels deployment. Fig 2. The BECOOL team at the kick off meeting in Bologna, Italy, June 2017.
