In today’s Morning Brief:

Call for Scientific Committee Members – Circular Bio-Based Industries Partnership

The CBE JU Scientific Committee is an advisory body of the Circular Bio-Based Europe Joint Undertaking. Its objective is to provide advice on the scientific priorities to be addressed in the CBE JU’s work programme in line with the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda and the Horizon Europe strategic planning. The Committee members will help highlight scientific achievements of the programme, suggest corrective measures for the programme implementation when necessary, and provide independent scientific advice on specific issues on the request of the CBE JU’s Governing Board.

Would like to become one of the 15 CBE JU Scientific Committee members to provide advice on the new partnership’s scientific priorities and activities? If you have relevant research and professional background, express your interest by 23 January!

For more information about how to apply and the selection process click here.

Building the Future 2022

The 4th edition of Building The Future promises a great deal of insights, connections and technology from the 26 to the 28 of January. Be part of the community and know everything about the digital transformation!

On the 27th of January, at 16h00 (Lisbon time), Arlindo Oliveira, President of INESC Holding will participate in the discussion on “The Future of Intelligence” so make sure to grab your ticket here.

German Government disavows Blue Hydrogen

The new German government has unveiled plans last week to massively increase the ambition of its national hydrogen strategy. There is just one caveat: fossil gas-based hydrogen likely won’t be included in subsidy schemes, despite demands from the oil and gas industry.

Clean hydrogen is seen as a potential silver bullet to decarbonise industries like steel and chemicals, which cannot fully electrify and need energy-dense fuels to generate high-temperature heat for their industrial processes.

The European Commission says it will play a key role to achieve the EU’s climate goals, saying that 24% of global energy demand in 2050 could be met with clean hydrogen.

However, Germany will make no subsidies available for so-called “blue hydrogen”, which is created by using fossil gas and sequestering the resulting CO2 emission using carbon and capture (CCS) technology, said Patrick Graichen, Habeck’s state-secretary and right-hand man.

Make sure to read this article on the issues with blue hydrogen and why Germany is stepping away from it here.

Outcomes of the BIOEASTsUP Workshop on Bioeconomy

On 8 December 2021, the BIOEASTsUP project organised a peer review exercise named “Bioeconomy to boost your business”. This was the final peer review from a series of five events aiming at exchange of good practices on knowledge and technology transfer from the region to be shared with policy makers and other relevant stakeholders.

Make sure to click here to find out the outcomes of this workshop.  

Aberystwyth University Maps where forests are changing around the world

Forests are one of the key natural methods of carbon capture, by storing it in their trunks, branches and roots. Maps revealing areas of the world’s forests which have substantively changed over the past decade have been published through a European Space Agency (ESA) project that is managed and coordinated by Aberystwyth University.

The ESA’s Climate Change Initiative Biomass project, has developed a way of estimating the weight of above ground components of forests. This research uses satellite data to produce high resolution maps showing which of the planet’s forests are being lost or expanding.

Click here to read more about the project and to find out how you can view the researchers’ data.

Start-ups are making progress with zero emission planes

A surprising number of start-ups already have zero-emission craft in the air and orders are on their books. This agility contrasts with the aviation giants like Airbus or Boeing, who have cumbersome corporate structures and are tied to established supply chains.

Lukas Kaestner, co-founder of Sustainable Aero Lab, an accelerator in Hamburg that mentors clean aerospace start-ups stated: “Getting to zero-emission aviation will require new kinds of technologies, new supply chains, and more speed than we’ve seen from aviation in past decades.”

With low-cost giants like Ryanair and EasyJet offering massive sales with flights just under 10€ making up for inflated train prices in many European countries, make sure to read this Science|Business article, on how many of these start-ups are determined to bring their innovations to the market themselves, and are confidently seeking venture capital to support their scale-up and growth here.