Carbon Negative Biofuels from Organic Waste – CARBIOW for short, is the project title of the latest EU project in Egersund, in the southern part of the Stavanger Region.
Svåheia Eiendom AS (SEAS), and their CTO, Edesio Miranda-Barbosa are together with 11 European partners, from 8 different countries, looking to address how the green transition and the circular economy can be fueled by the use of novel technologies, covering the whole process of organic waste to maritime and aviation fuels.
The goal of CARBIOW is to establish an efficient and scalable process to convert the Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste (OFMSW) and other hard-to-utilize solid organic wastes to biofuels.
SEAS, the only Norwegian partner in this project, is well positioned to help fuel the green transition.
They have a clear vision on sustainability, with the UN sustainability goals embedded in their operations and choice of partners.
Full score
The project, which will run over 3.5 years, was awarded a total of 4.8 million euros from the Horizon Europe programme.
Horizon applications are evaluated on a scale from 1 to 15, and the CARBIOW project scored a full 15 points among the evaluators.
Although the success rate in Horizon Europe is slightly higher than that of its predecessor, Horizon 2020, the competition is immense. Only excellent project proposals reach the threshold of the 15 points score.
Eager in Egersund
Egersund is no newcomer when it comes to EU projects.
Largely thanks to Edesio Miranda-Barbosa, and stakeholders such as SEAS, Eigersund Næring og Havn (ENH) and Energy Innovation, there has been a boom in EU-funded project proposal in the city of 15.000 inhabitants.
As we write this article, as total of 7 EU projects are being either implemented, or in the pipeline.
The newest project, being COPPER, is funded under EU’s Driving Urban Transition’s partnership (DUT), and will begin in 2024.
Funded projects include ROBINSON, which is developing an integrated energy system aimed at industrialized islands, helping them decarbonize their operations.
Funded under the previous framework programme, Horizon 2020, the project in many ways worked as a catalysator for other projects, creating a domino effect in Egersund.
International experience is key
But for the first project to become a reality, certain qualifications were needed.
Edesio’s international experience, having worked in France, Norway, the U.S., the Nerherlands and in Belgium, as well as his almost 20 years of experience in geology and sustainable energy, has helped steer the ecosystem for innovation and circular economy in Egersund towards Europe and EU funding.
Having worked as a project officer and currently expert evaluator for the Commission and Research council of Norway, Edesio has firsthand experience in how EU proposals are read and evaluated.
We took the opportunity to ask him a couple of questions related to his experience with EU projects.
─ Edesio, how important has the Brussels experience been to you when contributing to a proposal yourself?
─My experience in Brussels was fundamental to understand the complex EU Commission system. It was also a great possibility to enlarge my network and create new possibilities to develop my work, opening new challenges. Brussels is a multicultural city and this allows for work to be done in diversified ways. It was a rich laboratory for communication. Specifically on EU-proposals, the experience from Brussels helps me filter the necessary information to submit a good proposal, to build a strong consortium for such competitive programs and to see what can be the most important funding lines for proposal submission.
─ Egersund has a strong ecosystem for renewable and sustainability projects, with infrastructure such as the Egersund Energy hub. How can other municipalities eager to get ahead in these fields learn from Egersund?
─ I started working in Egersund in 2021 and suddenly I could see several possibilities to develop EU projects, with our developing topics being well connected to the EU green deal interests. The support from the municipality, industrial partners and from researchers (academia and research institutes) was the key to submit new proposals and to now develop our EU-projects, Edesio explains.
He underlines the role of the Energy Hub as a catalysator for the region:
─ Our Egersund Energy Hub is our basis to create new partnerships, to start the development of our project ideas and is now becoming a visit site for many that would like to work with us in Egersund. In our hub we are receiving potential partners from all of the world and authorities interested in our current research and innovation projects.
Edesio underscores the importance of good communication for public sector stakeholders wanting to get ahead on the EU arena:
─ A key recommendation for other municipalities is to develop a good communication channel and take the initiative to promote meetings, workshops and other events putting these three sectors together (public, industry and academia) and showing that all of us can get benefit of new innovative solutions, especially related to finding a sustainable way of life.
Team of twelve
With all this accumulated EU experience in Egersund, it is important not to forget the international ecosystem. No Horizon project is carried out without multiple, competent partners from across Europe. For the CARBIOW project, a total of twelve partners are involved:
FeyeCon, Universiteit Maastricht and VERTORO from the Netherlands, IVL Svenska Miljoeinstitutet from Sweden, NIC from Slovenia, SEAS from Norway, Sumitomo SHI FW from Finland, Technische Universitat Darmstadt from Germany, VITO from Belgium, and BIOPLAT and Cementos La Cruz, and last but not least, Fundación Tecnalia Research & Innovation, from Spain, who are coordinating the project.
You can read more about the CARBIOW project here.