Valorise the organic fraction of municipal solid waste through an integrated biorefinery at commercial level

Call Updates

Feb 2, 2021 4:32:01 PM

18 new BBI JU projects selected for funding

The BBI JU Programme Office has concluded evaluation of the last call for project proposals. 18 proposals have been selected to receive a total of €104.6 million BBI JU Call 2020 funding. Grant agreements with the successful candidates are expected to be signed by May 2020.

229 proposals were submitted to the Call 2020, for a total requested budget of €1.1 billion. 5 of them were found inadmissible or ineligible and thus 224 proposals were evaluated by independent experts. Out of them, 129 proposals (58%) passed all the thresholds set out in the call and 95 proposals (42%) were below threshold.

As a result of the evaluation, 18 proposals have been selected for BBI JU funding: three flagship actions, four demonstration actions, seven research & innovation actions and four coordination & support actions.

The successful applicants and the BBI JU Programme Office will now start preparing grant agreements to be signed by May 2021, for a total amount of €104.6 million. More information about the selected projects will be published after the grant agreement signature on BBI JU website.

Independent evaluators selected from Horizon 2020 expert database carried out the evaluation in a fully remote way due to the COVID-19 outbreak. We would like to thank all experts and BBI JU colleagues for their commitment and resilience that lead to successful evaluation results.

Sep 4, 2020 7:24:12 PM 

The BBI JU Programme Office has received 229 project proposals by the 3 September deadline of the Call 2020. Applicants have requested €1,110.4 million in BBI JU funding, whereas the indicative call budget is €102 million. Evaluation of the project proposals will take place in September – November 2020, and the call results will be out by January 2021 at the latest.

The submitted proposals are distributed as follows:

BBI JU Programme Office will now check the admissibility and eligibility of all the proposals. Evaluation of proposals with the help of external experts will start in September 2020, and the successful applicants will receive confirmation by January 2021 at the latest.

Apr 15, 2020 12:00:01 AM

The submission session is now available for: BBI-2020-SO1-F1(BBI-IA-FLAG)

Valorise the organic fraction of municipal solid waste through an integrated biorefinery at commercial level

ID: BBI-2020-SO1-F1
Type of action: BBI-IA-FLAG Bio-based Industries Innovation action - Flagship
Deadline Model : single-stage
Opening: 15 April 2020
Deadline: 03 September 2020 17:00:00 Brussels time

Horizon 2020

Call name: H2020-BBI-JTI-2020
Call ID: H2020-BBI-JTI-2020

Specific Challenge:

The organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) presents an important feedstock for biorefining to convert it into valuable compounds for applications in a variety of market segments. However, this precious feedstock is often perceived as a challenge for urban agendas, due to its potential pressure on the environment and human health. Together with other waste streams, the OFMSW is often used for energy recovery or sent to landfill. This pre-empts exploiting its potential for valuable products achievable in cascading operations. Aerobic (composting), anaerobic digestion and energy recovery processes on the OFMSW have been able to reduce this fraction going to landfill. However, these processes mainly result in low-value products such as compost, biogas and digestate, and incineration of valuable resources.

Building on earlier projects on OFMSW, industry is ready to scale up the total value chain to a first-ofa-kind biorefinery at commercial level. Successful operation at this level will start to realise a better exploitation of the potential of the OFMSW in Europe.

The specific challenge is to sustainably scale up the conversion of OFMSW into added-value products to commercial levels.

Scope:

Produce large-scale added-value end products from the OFMSW for identified market applications in a successfully operating, first-of-its-kind biorefinery.

This topic excludes proposals having compost, digestate, biogas, methane or biofuels as the main products. It also excludes proposals having OFMSW sub-streams (such as food-processing waste, food waste from hotels, restaurants and the catering industry) as the main part of the feedstock for biorefining.

If applicable, the OFMSW may be mixed with municipal wastewater sludge, but keeping the OFMSW as the main fraction. Complex and heterogeneous municipal solid waste must be the main feedstock addressed by proposals.

The activities of this biorefinery must be included in a strategy for the valorisation of the OFMSW resources of the area where the biorefinery is operating. In particular, projects should realise a biorefinery that is integrated in the existing territorial waste management schemes and policies, involving all relevant stakeholders from the public and private sectors, and seek to improve and optimise current waste management schemes and practices in the subject territory.

Proposals should be fit for replicability in other territories.

The envisaged biorefinery should fully integrate feedstock supply and processing technologies to deliver products with targeted functionalities to meet identified market demand at competitive prices. It should demonstrate effective and cost-efficient operation at a commercial level, applying where relevant the cascading use of the biomass feedstock to maximise resource efficiency.

Proposals may include any processing technology (excluding those leading primarily to compost, digestate, biogas, methane or biofuels) that has been demonstrated in an optimised value chain at TRL 6-7 and should encompass all processing stages leading to intermediate and end products.

Proposals should address all requirements for IA - flagship actions as shown in Table 3 in the Introduction.

The technology readiness level (TRL) at the end of the project should be 8. Proposals should clearly state the starting and end TRLs of the key technology or technologies targeted in the project.

INDICATIVE FUNDING

It is considered that proposals requesting a maximum contribution of EUR 15 million would be able to address this specific challenge appropriately. However, this does not preclude the submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:EXPECTED IMPACTS LINKED TO BBI JU KPIS:

• contribute to KPI 1 – create at least one new cross-sector interconnection in the bio-based economy;

• contribute to KPI 2 – create at least one new bio-based value chains;

• contribute to KPI 4 – produce at least one new building block based on OFMSW;

• contribute to KPI 5 – produce at least one new bio-based material based on OFMSW;

• contribute to KPI 6 – Demonstrate at least one new ‘consumer’ products based on bio-based chemicals and materials that meet market requirements.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS:

• increase the overall resource efficiency;

• reduce quantities of OFMSW routed to landfill and incineration as compared with relevant business cases identified as benchmarks;

• reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

ECONOMIC IMPACTS:

• increased added-value to bio-based products resulting from underutilised feedstocks;

• increase income and business opportunities for stakeholders and actors in the bio-based sectors, in particular in the collecting, management and treatment of OFMSW.

SOCIAL IMPACTS:

• create new job opportunities in the bio-based sector, particularly the rural and/or urban areas;

• retain and/or develop new skills.

TYPE OF ACTION: Innovation action – flagship action.

Cross-cutting Priorities:Cross-cutting Key-Enabling Technologies (KETs)