SUSTAINABLE, SECURE AND COMPETITIVE ENERGY THROUGH SCALING UP ADVANCED BIOFUEL GENERATION

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Europe is on an ambitious path to becoming climate neutral by 2050, aiming to cut 55% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030. Transport is a sector where so far it has proved harder to reduce emissions, while being one of the main energy users and source of emissions. Transport sectors such as aviation heavily depend on high energy density fuels, for which sustainable biofuels are the best near term low-carbon renewable alternative. Biofuel production based on algae is being considered as a main clean energy alternative and one of the most promising solutions. However, there are several challenges that hinder development and application of algae-based biofuel, ranging across the entire value chain. SUSTEPS main overall objective is to improve key knowledge, identify systemic constraints and opportunities, and propose solutions for the scaling up of a sustainable algae-based biofuel value chain. It aims to contribute to cost-effective and more sustainable large-scale production of sustainable algae-based biofuels by developing and validating a bio-refinery concept that efficiently produces sustainable biofuel from non-food/feed microalgae via CO2 fixation from high-emission facilities and through feeding on nutrient-rich wastewater, thereby minimising biomass production costs and utilising harmful CO2 emitted from energy-intensive activities. The process will be coupled with green hydrogen to be used in upgrading of microalgae-based fuel, and smart integration of processes that also produce value-added chemicals, valorising all side streams effectively. Based on international collaboration, SUSTEPS will build a more efficient, less costly CO2-to-biofuels process, identifying systemic constraints, opportunities and solutions for scaling up the value chain of algae-based sustainable biofuels which will support the development of best practices and concepts along the entire value chain and accelerate the scale-up of sustainable biofuels worldwide.