DIGITAL

BIOPLAT-EU

Promoting sustainable use of underutilized lands for bioenergy production through a web-based Platform for Europe

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Motivation and Challenges

The BIOPLAT-EU project promotes and supports the uptake of sustainable bioenergy projects on marginal, underutilized and contaminated lands (MUC lands) in Europe. These lands cannot be used for food production or for recreational and conservation purposes, but in some cases, they still retain the potential to produce biomass for non-food purposes. Moreover such use of these lands is often not known to stakeholders, therefore the project promotes and informs about opportunities through a web-based platform which will include a public user friendly geographic information system tool.

Users will be enabled to assess the environmental, social and techno-economic sustainability aspects of defined value chains for bioenergy production on MUC lands through this tool. This is supported by stakeholder engagement activities. In order to remove legal barriers for the uptake of such projects, communication activities with the responsible authorities will be organised. As for the technical and financial barriers, the project supports stakeholders and gives guidance on how such projects can be implemented. Moreover, it links biomass producers and processors with investors and guides them on how to make their projects bankable.

Project duration: 11/2018 – 10/2021.

Approach

For the creation of MUC land maps in Europe, two layers have been generated: one map covering whole Europe and Ukraine with lower resolution data and more detailed maps for 12 case study areas throughout Europe. Contaminated maps are generated based on existing heavy metal concentrations in soils. The maps of underutilized areas are generated based on high resolution data (Copernicus high resolution layers (HRLs), time series data from Sentinels and other satellites) and their attributes. 

Preliminary Results

The results show encouraging quality, especially in the mediterranean region, where used areas can be confidently separated from underutilized land due to the differences in their temporal reflectance over the past years. 

Project Partners

1. WIRTSCHAFT UND INFRASTRUKTUR GMBH & CO PLANUNGS KG Germany

2. FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS FAO Italy

3. GEONARDO ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES LTD Hungary

5. FORSHUNGSINSTITUTE FUR BERGBAUFOLGELANDSCAFTEN E.V. Germany

6. CONSIGLIO PER LA RICERCA IN AGRICOLTURA E L'ANALISI DELL'ECONOMIA AGRARIA Italy

7. NAUKOVO-TEHNICHNII CENTAR BIOMASA LLC Ukraine

8. UNIVERSIDAD DE CASTILLA - LA MANCHA Spain

9. CENTRUL PENTRU PROMOVAREA ENERGIEI CURATE SI EFICIENTA IN ROMANIA ENERO ASOCIATIEI Romania

10. EUROPEAN LANDOWNERS ORGANIZATION Belgium

11. 1to3 Capital B.V. Netherlands

12. NESTE OYJ Finland

 

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 818083.

Web page
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More information can be found at https://bioplat.eu/ 

For further information please contact