The European Union plans to cut its carbon emissions by 20% while raising renewable sources up to 20% of total energy use by 2020. Simultaneously, chemical industry aims at raising the share of renewable carbon up to 17% in the broad family of chemicals and materials by 2017.
Plant biomass has therefore a great potential to become a major alternative source to fossil carbon.
The foresight workshop « Which plants and sustainable production systems for biomass in the future? », launched in April 2008 aims at characterizing annual and perennial plants, micro-algae and biomass production systems that would meet the needs and requirements of new bioenergy and green chemistry chains. Sustainability being a key issue, the workshop also integrates environmental, social and economic dimensions.
The foresight workshop federates 20 French bodies: public research or higher education organizations, professional unions, private companies and associations which play a leading role in their respective area.
The set of experts who participate to the workshop includes specialists from many disciplines (e.g. plant physiology and genetics, biotechnologies, agronomy, ecology, economics and social sciences).
This workshop articulates 3 interrelated approaches: a reverse engineering approach that starts from the needs expressed by different industries; the exploration and optimization of production systems based on relevant plant and algal species, including biorefinery as well as green and white biotechnologies; the assessment of the environmental, territorial and economic performances of these systems.
The presentation will outline the first results before the final deliverables scheduled for Spring 2010.