Supergen Bioenergy Hub

DELIVERING SUSTAINABLE BIOENERGY IMPACT THROUGH COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

Delivering sustainable bioenergy impact through collaborative research

Future Biogas, UK

Bioenergy in the UK and Europe

Delivering impact

Bioenergy in the UK is a significant and increasing component of the country’s renewable energy portfolio.

The Supergen Bioenergy Hub is a collaborative research initiative funded by the UK government through UK Research and Innovation.

With a focus on delivering impact, the hub aims to increase sustainable biomass production in the UK to minimise greenhouse emissions, focusing on key aviation, hydrogen, heat and product sectors.

The hub’s novel technology development projects in the following areas could significantly impact UK energy system sustainability:

In 2021, bioenergy in the UK delivered: - 32 percent of renewable electricity - 92 percent of renewable transport fuel - 72 percent of renewable heat This represents 13 percent of the UK’s total electricity, five percent of its total fuel, and seven percent of its total heat supply.

Biomass has a huge range of end uses, from energy applications such as domestic heating, transport fuel and electricity generation, to displacing fossil feedstocks and their derivatives in manufacturing and construction.

Various domestic and imported biomass sources are used for energy production in the UK and Europe, including wood, agricultural residues, energy crops and organic waste.

The UK government has provided financial incentives and subsidies to encourage the use of biomass for energy production. Schemes like the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) and Contracts for Difference (CfD) have supported the growth of the biomass industry.

The EU has set ambitious renewable energy targets – with a particular focus on bioenergy – with the aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change.

To ensure that bioenergy production is sustainable and does not harm the environment, the UK and the EU have implemented sustainability criteria, including restrictions on the source of biomass and emissions standards.

The UK’s recently published Biomass Strategy demonstrates an ambition to develop a more holistic approach to ensuring sustainability, where both carbon and non-carbon risks and benefits for society, the environment and the economy are assessed and accounted for.

Researchers at the Supergen Bioenergy Hub worked closely with government departments to provide scientific evidence to inform the UK Biomass Strategy, and the strategy’s commitment to developing a cross-sectoral sustainability framework follows the hub’s work in this area.

Left: Terravesta Athena ™ Miscanthus

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Digitalisation and AI for AD (anaerobic digestion) Biowaste electrolysis Negative emission hydrogen from biomass gasification Waste gasification for hydrogen-BECCUS (bioenergy with carbon capture, utilisation and storage) • rDME (renewable dimethyl ether) for off-grid energy • Bio-derived sustainable aviation fuels Other projects will provide cross-cutting information to advance sustainability in the areas of: • Global indirect land use change (ILUC) • Biomass fractionation • Bio-based and biodegradable chemicals • Scale-up of feedstock production • Biorefinery efficiency and scale-up • Maximising sustainability trade-offs The hub fosters collaboration between researchers, industry stakeholders, policymakers and the public to facilitate knowledge exchange and promote the integration of sustainable bioenergy solutions into the UK’s energy landscape.

The hub works closely with industry partners through a variety of mechanisms, including project collaboration, secondments and its advisory group. A new industrial forum is being launched to share technical information and respond to the challenges of the biomass and bioenergy community.

A key industrial partner is the REA (Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology), which acts as an important connector between industry and academia in this space.

The Supergen Bioenergy Hub sees sustained partnership between academia, industry, governmental and societal stakeholders as the key to successful and sustainable deployment of bioenergy.

Professor Patricia Thornley is Director of the Supergen Bioenergy Hub and the Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute at Aston University, UK. She is a chartered physicist with over 30 years’ experience of bioenergy in the commercial and academic sectors.

Could you offer some insight into the Supergen Bioenergy Hub to date and how the focus on delivering impact has changed your approach?

The Supergen Bioenergy Hub has delivered internationally leading research in sustainable bioenergy systems for the last 12 years. Comprising outstanding UK research groups, it has focused on identifying sustainable biomass resources, honing clean technologies for efficient conversion to energy and high-specification products, and taking a whole systems approach to identify which options deliver sustainability objectives. This has allowed us to support companies moving into biomass for their net zero ambitions and organisations seeking evidence on the real impact of biomass systems in different global contexts. But research and evidence can only get you so far. Increasingly, we have been working with partners as they take their first steps towards deployment. Our new focus on impact will allow us to comprehensively support UK businesses trying to deliver carbon reductions via biomass.

We will focus more on individual technologies that have the potential to disrupt traditional operations, like using AI to improve performance and deploying advanced chemical techniques to convert biomass to hydrogen or aviation fuels. To accelerate research commercialisation, we’ll be working directly with technology developers and end-users as much as possible.

Sustainability is at the very core of your work.

Tell us more about your sustainability research and its impact.

I want the research we do to have positive benefits for the environment, the economy and for people in the UK and worldwide. Assessing and monitoring the sustainability of different bioenergy systems is incredibly important.

The first aspect of sustainability many people think about is carbon – and it’s right that they should. We’re living at a critical period for climate change and need urgently to reduce carbon emissions. It’s imperative that all of our work is focused on bioenergy systems that actually reduce carbon emissions. But we need to go further and look at the cumulative impact globally. Our projects on scaling up biomass production and indirect land use change are particularly important as they give large-scale perspectives on potential impacts.

We also need to go beyond carbon. There are a whole

host of environmental factors (air quality, water pollution, land contamination, biodiversity, to name a few!) that can be affected by growing and using biomass, and those effects can be positive or negative. Then there are ‘non-environmental’ impacts. These economic and social impacts often attract less attention at early stages of development but can be absolutely critical when it comes to implementation. Initiatives are often judged not (only) by their ecological impact, but by how many jobs they create, what environmental or infrastructure benefits result, and whether they make a positive difference to the UK’s trade balance. We assess and evaluate those tradeoffs to facilitate informed decision-making and improve the design and operation of bioenergy facilities.

What opportunities does biomass provide for companies looking to decarbonise their operations?

Biomass can be really effective in decarbonising heat requirements: whether high-temperature industrial process heat or low-temperature space heating. It offers particularly valuable solutions in rural and coastal locations. There’s huge potential in sectors like food processing, but also in a whole range of process industries like glass, cement and chemical production.

We also need to be aware that this isn’t just about energy.

Many of the products that we currently get from oil, gas and coal could become more challenging to produce in a decarbonised future. Biomass provides a renewable source of carbon for things like bio-derived plastics (which can also be biodegradable, so win-win), but also potentially for surfactants (used in the laundry and personal care sectors) as well as for waxes, greases and lubricants. That means there are companies who today make a whole range of products, chemicals and materials who might be able to make their carbon footprint and operations more sustainable by switching to bio-derived feedstocks in the future. We can help by working with industrialists to identify suitable feedstocks and analyse the performance and sustainability of pathways to new products.

How do you currently work with industrial partners and what opportunities do you see for the future?

We have an advisory board comprising mostly industrial partners and they are embedded into many of our projects. Moving forward we want to make those opportunities more widely available.

That’s why we’re establishing an industrial forum: a physical and virtual space where industrialists and academics can share technical details and respond to challenges. If you want to get involved, get in touch.

We also want to improve understanding among other key stakeholders who have less specific interest in bioenergy, like planners, local authorities and consultants.

That’s why we’re establishing a professional forum to facilitate two-way exchange of information and personnel.

We’ll run training and information sessions at a less technically focused level, and provide a mechanism for locating specialist expertise in academia. We hope this will help unblock some of the barriers that still exist around biomass utilisation.

What do you think are the next big questions for UK bioenergy research and what most excites you?

While the UK has made huge progress with its carbon targets, I am increasingly convinced that we will need to

remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere to limit climate change impacts to tolerable levels. Trees and plants are very efficient at doing that for us. I think we need to capitalise on the asset of our trees and plants by strategically developing biomass to energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). The principle of using energy that hasn’t contributed CO2 to atmosphere, but has actually removed it, is game-changing! Of course, the challenge is in ensuring sustainability at a reasonable cost.

On a related note, I do get worried at the prospect of sinking huge quantities of CO2 underground (one of the storage options for BECCS). Carbon atoms in all shapes and forms have been essential for our existence for millennia. When we get to 2050 and beyond, we might regret having securely buried all those carbon atoms so inaccessibly. So, I’m a big fan of exploring ways of using the carbon sequestered in trees and plants to provide the things we need. That opens up a whole array of exciting opportunities for new products and materials, and we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface. I think there are many exciting developments to come!

The Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute at Aston University

The Supergen Bioenergy Hub works with multi-sector stakeholders to develop sustainable bioenergy systems that support the UK’s transition to an affordable, resilient, low-carbon future. Our research aims to identify pathways for delivering bioenergy with wider social, economic and environmental benefits.

As we enter the next phase of our journey, we’re looking for partners to help us create impact through collaborative projects. If you have a decarbonisation vision that could be supported by biomass and bioenergy... ....we want to hear from you!

www.supergen-bioenergy.net/contact

THE SUPERGEN BIOENERGY HUB p.thornley@aston.ac.uk supergen-bioenergy.net

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