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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GRACE (GRowing Advanced industrial Crops on marginal lands for biorEfineries)

Teaser

Summary

The BBI demonstration project â€œGRowing Advanced industrial Crops on marginal lands for biorEfineriesâ€ (GRACE) is an EU-funded project, which aims to optimize biomass value chains for a range of biobased products with biomass from miscanthus and hemp hybrids.
The goals of the project are to produce biobased products with a strong market potential, to guarantee a reliable and affordable supply of sustainably produced biomass, and to better link biomass producers with the processing industry. In order to avoid competition with food and feed crops, miscanthus and hemp are cultivated on areas that are abandoned or less favourable for food production due to lower yields or pollution by heavy metals.

The GRACE project builds on knowledge gained from previous projects, including the EU-projects OPTIMSC and MultiHemp. Both projects contributed to identify promising miscanthus and hemp germplasm for crop production suitable for various end uses and for cultivation on marginal or low-productive lands.
In OPTIMISC and MultiHemp, a large number of germplasm accessions were screened for traits conferring frost, drought and salinity. While these traits, singularly and in combination, are key to developing these crops for marginal lands, both projects worked only at lab and small field plot scale.
The GRACE project aims to develop the knowledge needed for commercial upscaling of miscanthus and hemp biomass production on lower grade marginal lands and connect the biomass produced with a range of end products via demonstration cases.
The GRACE consortium involves a close collaboration between breeders, growers and downstream industry who together will match new cultivars with specific end-uses.

The GRACE project is contributing towards the goal of transforming the European economy into a sustainable bioeconomy. Thereby, the GRACE project is especially focussing on provision of sustainable produced feedstock and linking the whole value chain from biomass production to the final biobased product. To ensure the sustainability and avoid negative impacts on environment and society, all value chains are monitored by environmental, social and economic life-cycle assessment tools. Shifting the fossil based economy more towards a bioeconomy is part of an integrated strategy to address societal challenges, such as climate change, while helping to create new jobs especially for rural areas.

Work performed

In the first 18 months of the project, the consortium established more than 20 field trials at three different scales: plot (by hand), field and full commercial scale (using machines). Extreme climatic conditions in 2018, with droughts and floods in large parts of Central Europe made crop establishment challenging. Advanced agronomic techniques for establishment showed that risks of crop failure could be mitigated. The consortium will plant further trials in 2019 to ensure biomass supply for the downstream industry partners. Industrial partners are preparing equipment for larger scale tests with hemp and miscanthus feedstocks and making good progress in setting-up and building new demonstration plants.

Academics, in close collaboration with industrial partners have defined the goal and scope of the environmental, social and economic assessments for each step in each of the ten GRACE value chains. The data collection for these assessments has been started and will be ongoing in the upcoming months.

To maximize the commercial impact of the GRACE project, an open Industry Panel has been established with 10 companies to date. Membership of the Industry Panel will remain open for the duration of the project.

Final results

\"The partners of the GRACE project are working to progress beyond the current state of the art in crop production and biomass conversion to expand the future bioeconomy. Expected impacts of the GRACE project are:
- to increase utilization of low quality arable land (low-productivity, contaminated or unused) and by doing so, minimize the potential for food/fuel competition.
- to demonstrate to potential growers/farmers where the cultivation of hemp and miscanthus are both, economically viable and environmentally sound.
- to incubate innovation in the utilization of the biomass and thereby create new business opportunities for rural areas.
- to reduce import dependency of Europe in energy and chemical sectors, by paving the way for viable options to produce biofuels and biobased platform chemicals based on biomass from marginal, contaminated or unused land.
- to demonstrate the direct and indirect social and environmental benefits of perennial biomass production and utilization, such as the prevention of soil erosion by soil stabilization on slopes, soil remediation, and an alternative
revenue for currently uneconomic or contaminated farm land.
- to demonstrate that introducing biomass crops in the right places, will increase food security rather than compete with food crop production through long term improvements in soil fertility on depleted, abandoned or contaminated
land for future food production.
- to contribute to the development of the European Bioeconomy by demonstrating the production of novel biobased-products with a high market potential.
The GRACE project thereby contributes to the following Key Performance Indicators (KPI) of the European Union:
- KPI 2: â€œTen new bio-based value chains by 2020â€, by demonstration of new biobased value chains (from biomass production to biobased product).
- KPI 3: \"\"A shorter time to market\"\", by setting up new cross-industry cooperation. In GRACE more than 50% of the partners are SMEs, which exceeds the EC H2020 target of 20% SME contribution.
- KPI 4: â€œ5 new building blocks for the chemical industry by 2020â€, by demonstration of novel building blocks.
- KPI 5: â€œFifty new biobased materials by 2020â€, by upscaling of production of new biobased materials.

The GRACE project will contribute to the European Bioeconomy by increasing the biomass production from marginal lands and reducing the cost of crop establishment. This will enable current marginal land in the EU (estimated as 5% of crop land and 10% of grassland), which is at least 3.5% of the area.
The value of the biomass produced from this area, even if it was used as a feedstock for thermal energy, would add an estimated 11bn euro to the economy.
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