Press Release - 8 November 2021 - MUSIC Regional Stakeholder Workshops completed

Regional stakeholder engagement workshops in the four case study regions of the MUSIC project, September/October 2021

To support the market uptake of innovative technologies such as fast pyrolysis, torrefaction and microbial oil production, stakeholder engagement is crucial. Therefore, organising sev-eral series of regional stakeholder engagement workshops is one of the most significant ac-tivities in the MUSIC project. In this way, stakeholders get the opportunity to exchange their opinion on IBCs market uptake. In each of the four workshops about 15-20 key stakeholders were participating. The attendees represented different actors along biomass supply chains: from feedstock provision and conversion technology to final application of IBCs. Through involvement of different kind of stakeholders in the discussions, a holistic view of the market potential of IBCs was illustrated.

Due to COVID-19 related restrictions, the majority of workshops were held as online meet-ings, but the last workshop could be held physically in Ghent (Belgium). This created ad-vantages over the online workshops, because physical meetings provide an increasing and more lively potential for bilateral discussions, which is quite beneficial for networking and creative work. More opportunities for further exchange will be provided in the upcoming stakeholder engagement workshops in 2022. We are quite optimistic that these next events can be held physically in the MUSIC case study regions. Of course, you will be informed about them in time on our website and via email.

Main aspects that came up during all the workshops are:

• Legal framework conditions create high uncertainty regarding investment security
• Potential investors are quite interested in innovative technologies; but of course, the tech-nology’s economic assessment is key (“Chicken-and-egg-problem of new technologies”)
• Quality of end-product is strongly dependent on quality of feedstock used as conversion in-put
• Differentiation between technical biomass potential and mobilizable biomass potential is important, especially considering competition on feedstock with other industries

The key aspects will be shared with consortium partners during internal project meetings. This is especially relevant for MUSIC partners in work package 5 “Case Studies on Supply Chain Logistics”, because they are the ones which have a much better understanding of regional circumstances and are often already in contact with the stakeholders. Finally, main insights of the four series of stakeholder engagement workshops will be summa-rised in a report (MUSIC Deliverable 3.7), that is to be published by the end of the MUSIC project.

In case of further queries or remarks, please do not hesitate to contact the MUSIC team.

Dr. agr. Konrad Siegfried, Deutsches Biomasseforschungszentrum (DBFZ) gGmbH
Email: konrad.siegfried@dbfz.de
Phone: +49 341 2434 568