From advanced conversion technologies to priority value chains

For the last decade ETIP Bioenergy has referred to the EIBI value chains that were defined in 2009. In 2019 after formulating the fourth version of the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) in 2018 and considering the technical and regulatory developments in the last decade, the Steering Committee initiated a review of the value chains, to become more suitable for the technologies and the situation at the onset of the 2020’s. The result of this review is preliminarily presented in this page. The production of transport biofuels, heat, and electricity encompasses a number of steps from feedstocks to energy carrier products that allows value for the users and society. There are numerous different feedstocks, conversion technologies, products, and end-use market segments.

A pathway is a very specific combination of these elements, starting from a specific feedstock, using a specific conversion technology, producing a specific product that goes into a specific end-use market sector and has a certain value. A pathway can have any value of technology readiness level (TRL).

A value chain is a cluster of conversion pathways from a range of feedstocks to a range of products. Value chains are able to provide a relevant contribution to the 2030 targets and are sufficiently developed to allow for a proper description and evaluation of the “values”. The focus is on grouping pathways by technologies, as to define research needs and TRL for this group of technologies.

• Established value chains are value chains at TRL9, i.e. they are widely used in many industrial installations, e.g. (non-exhaustively) biomass boilers, AD biogas generation, FAME biodiesel and crop-based ethanol, etc. providing heat, power, biogas or biofuels.
  
  
• Priority value chains are value chains that are developed beyond the research stage while not yet being established industrially, i.e. TRL5-8. Their technology will allow the use of new and more sustainable feedstock sources in the short to medium term, which are converted to mainly biogas and biofuels, in particular “advanced biofuels”.
  
  
• Development pathways are pathways still in research and development stage, i.e. < TRL5.

The scheme below describes the new priority value chains and replaces the scheme of the old value chains applying advanced conversion technologies below:

Priority Value Chains

(replaces advanced conversion technologies VCs)