Bioenergy Retrofits for Europe’s Industry – Handbook published

BIOFIT is an EU project that aims to facilitate the introduction of bioenergy retrofitting in Europe’s industry. The consortium experts have now published a handbook that shows why and how to retrofit.

Retrofitting is one of the fastest ways to increase Europe’s renewable energy share by making the energy production of existing industries more sustainable. Compared to completely new ‘greenfield’ installations, retrofitting could have the advantage of lower capital costs, shorter lead times, faster implementation, less production time losses and lower risks.

The BIOFIT consortium has now published a handbook on “Technical options for retrofitting industries with bioenergy”. The handbook includes arguments for retrofitting, describes the retrofitting process and its impact on public perception, summarizes the European biomass potential and logistics of biomass, provides an overview on biomass conversion pathways, and finally, explains technical retrofitting solutions for industries. The addressed industries are first-generation biofuels, pulp and paper, fossil refineries, fossil firing power and Combined Heat and Power (CHP) sectors.

The handbook shows that there is an abundance of possibilities to produce high value energy carriers, biofuels and other forms of energy from biomass, and that bioenergy retrofitting is a promising, but also already widely practiced, proven way to increase the sustainability of production processes.

The handbook provides this information to stakeholders and decision makers in the relevant industries who might have only little technical background. The handbook aims to open their eyes and to facilitate the technical understanding of bioenergy opportunities for their industries. The almost 100 pages long document is available in English and is currently being translated into Bosnian, Dutch, German, Greek, and Spanish. It is available for free download at: https://www.biofit-h2020.eu. The printed version will be distributed at BIOFIT events.