Resource-efficient production

The Austrian Federal Government‘s strategy for research, technology and innovation (RTI) includes the statement that research and technological development will play a vital part in meeting the great social challenges of our time.

Even today biobased industry is an area of real strength in Austrian research and industry. From 2000 on, with funding from the RTI programme "Factory of Tomorow", numerous projects have been launched and successfully completed – the biorefinery in Utzenaich Is an example.

Since 2011 the issue of how to harness biogenic raw materials for use in industry has been tackled in bmvit's RTI programme "Production of the Future" as the subfocus "biobased industry". For this subfocus 10 million Euro in all have been budgeted till 2019, in order to provide systematic support for Austrian industry and tune it up for the European and international research arena – for at European level systematic support is being provided for developing biobased industry and developing and utilizing biobased products, since sustainable industry strategies are expected to play a decisive part in future.

In Horizon 2020 a JTI (Joint Technology Initiative) on biobased industries has been set up, to encourage collaboration between research organizations and firms in this very promising area and thus make Europe more competitive.

In the International Energy Agency research on this topic is in progress in the Working Party on Renewable Energy Technologies' Implementing Agreement "Bioenergy", with Austrian scientists deeply involved. Here biobased industry is mainly addressed in Task 42 "Biorefining", i.e. in sustainable ways of processing biomass into a variety of saleable products and energy.

To define a path for future RTI activities in the field of biobased industry, BMVIT has – in consultation with experts from research and industry – drawn up and published both a Research Agenda and an RTI Strategy for this issue.