ABSTRACT
The bioeconomy, the renewable part of the circular economy, encompasses the sustainable production of renewable biological resources and their conversion into food, feed, biobased products and bioenergy. It offers a unique opportunity to comprehensively address inter-connected societal challenges such as food security, natural resource scarcity, fossil resources dependence and climate change, while achieving sustainable economic growth. Methods such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) have been developed for evaluating the environmental impacts associated with a product, process or activity. The biobased economy is the non-food pillar of the bioeconomy. It is a low waste production chain starting from the use of land and sea, through the transformation and production of biobased products adapted to the requirements of end-users.
The lignocellulosic biomass is the main renewable biological resources used as raw materials in the biobased economy. It refers to non-edible plant materials (contained in the plant cell walls) made up primarily of cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin. It is expected to be used increasingly in the coming years for the industrial production of energy and non-energy products by second-generation biorefineries through a variety of conversion technologies (biochemical and/or thermochemical pathways).
