Future research infrastructure for European leadership in circular forest bioeconomy

One of the global challenges is to move from the fossil-based economy to sustainable bioeconomy. The forest-based sector has the opportunity to take the lead here by linking the whole value chain from the management and use of natural resources to the delivery of products and services. The forest bioeconomy has high potential in energy products, chemicals and new materials.

ERIFORE – European Research Infrastructure for Circular Forest Bioeconomy – is an infrastructure development project under the European Union’s Research and Innovation Framework Programme Horizon 2020. The ERIFORE consortium consists of 13 experienced organisations with a high professional level of specialists aiming to establish a cooperation network between European open access research infrastructures. In the long-term, the ambition is that the distributed research infrastructure for circular forest bioeconomy becomes a flagship in the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI).

The event will highlight the following issues:

• There is need to develop new value added products from forest based biomass enabling implementation of European bioeconomy strategy.
• Sustainable development and enhanced utilization of the European research and innovation infrastructures require long-term commitments and new funding models.
• ERIFORE aims for an open access distributed research infrastructure which bridges science and innovation across many technology fields throughout the whole value chain.