James Hutton Institute contributes to Biorefinery Roadmap for Scotland

"We at the Institute view biorefining as an absolute necessity for life going forward and can be considered as a route to help deliver the Sustainable Development Goal 12: Responsible Production and Consumption"

The James Hutton Institute has contributed to a body of evidence compiled by the Scottish Industrial Biotechnology Development Group to demonstrate Scotland’s global competitiveness in biorefining and attracting inward investment.

The document, titled “Scotland’s Biorefinery Road Map - Building a Sustainable Future” and launched at the at the Bio World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology in the US this week (July 8 - 11), demonstrates the opportunities manufacturers have to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and increase the emphasis on sustainability by using biological resources instead of traditional petroleum-based methods.

Roger Kilburn, Chair of the Scottish IB Development Group and Chief Executive of the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC), explained to delegates how Scotland’s location and geography provides competitively priced, green, renewable energy from wind which, has the potential to power biorefineries across key resource streams, including agricultural and forestry biomasses, whisky co-products, and carbon dioxide. This provides both the feedstock and the energy required to utilise industrial biotechnology IB to manufacture useful products and drive Scotland’s transition to a low-carbon future.

Professor Derek Stewart, agri-food sector lead at the James Hutton Institute, commented: “We at the Institute view biorefining as an absolute necessity for life going forward and can be considered as a route to help deliver the Sustainable Development Goal 12: Responsible Production and Consumption.

“Globally we need to be using sustainable feedstocks, reducing waste and ensuring that production processes are, at the very least, greenhouse gas neutral. The James Hutton Institute has embraced biorefining as a mechanism to deliver this in several projects, and with IBioIC, will continue on this path.”

The National Plan for Industrial Biotechnology for Scotland was launched in 2013 with the aim of increasing industrial biotechnology turnover from £189m to £900m by 2025. It was acknowledged that biorefineries would be key help achieve these goals and the Biorefinery Roadmap for Scotland supports this ambition.

The roadmap can be downloaded from the IBioIC website: http://www.ibioic.com/news_and_events/publications/d9/.