Tag Archive for: Bio4Energy Strategic Funds

Bio4Energy Gathers in Luleå to Strengthen Collaboration and Share Research Progress

Bio4Energy researchers came together in Luleå on 26–27 May 2025 for the biannual Researchers’ Meeting, an occasion to share scientific insights, discuss future directions, and reinforce the strong collaborative spirit that defines the Bio4Energy research environment.

Dinner at Hotel Clarion Sense, where participants enjoyed great food and conversation in a relaxed setting.
Dinner at Hotel Clarion Sense, where participants enjoyed great food and conversation in a relaxed setting.

Around 60 participants took part in the event, which began with a shared dinner at Hotel Clarion Sense. The informal setting offered an opportunity to reconnect across institutions and platforms. The following day, the formal programme featured presentations from Bio4Energy’s seven research platforms, highlighting recent progress in areas such as sustainable feedstocks, biorefinery development, life-cycle assessment, and industrial implementation.

The afternoon programme opened with a series of engaging presentations, showcasing selected projects supported through Bio4Energy’s strategic funds. The talks sparked several interesting questions from the audience. This was followed by a focused workshop session, where participants collaborated in small groups to develop cross-platform Theme Reports on topics of high societal relevance — including hydrogen, biochar, bioeconomy, and nutrient recirculation. These reports are intended to increase the visibility and societal impact of Bio4Energy’s work, by clearly demonstrating its relevance to policy, industry, and the public, particularly through outreach channels such as media and strategic dialogues with decision-makers.

The meeting served not only as a platform for knowledge exchange but also as a reminder of the importance of cross-platform collaboration in tackling the challenges of a sustainable industrial transition.

Bio4Energy would like to thank all participants for their valuable contributions, and all organisers involved in making this spring’s meeting a success.

Here some pictures from event:

Algae production at Dåva, Umeå, Sweden. Photo by courtesy of Francesco Gentili.

New Projects Supported by Bio4Energy Strategic Funds

Twenty per cent of all funding to Bio4Energy is set aside as Strategic Funds used to create synergies, explore and address new and important avenues of research. In 2023, several such strategic projects will be launched, following a call for funding during the autumn. The first two projects started on 1 January 2023, with additional projects coming up later.

The project Circular and sustainable production of bioplastics with the help of photosynthetic microorganisms – Proof of concept”, aims to investigate the feasibility of feeding carbohydrates produced by photosynthetic microalgae to bacteria producing polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) at pilot scale in northern Sweden. PHB is a promising material for producing biodegradable plastics, and in this proof-of-concept project the PHB production will be studied and optimised, in order to enable a successful implementation at industrial scale. Francesco Gentili at SLU heads the project, which is a collaboration between researchers at SLU, UmU, and RISE Processum.

The second project, “Trade-off between wood quantity and quality in response to nitrogen fertilization – Is there a breaking point for beneficial nitrogen level in boreal forests?”, will investigate the relationship between volume growth and wood quality in response to nitrogen fertilization in both Norway spruce and aspen. The goal is to identify optimal fertilization regimes that balance between volume growth and wood quality of forest feedstocks in different locations in Sweden. This will pave the way for feedstock with beneficial qualitative properties, without compromising the growth of the trees, even in poor and abandoned soils. The project, which is led by Hannele Tuominen at SLU, is a collaboration between SLU, UmU and RISE. More information about Bio4Energy’s strategic funds and projects, including a list of ongoing and finalised projects, can be found under this link.

Text by the Bio4Energy programme managers and deputy programme manager