Bioeconomy and green recovery in a post-COVID-19 era.

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a health crisis and repetitive lockdowns that disrupted different economic and societal segments. As the world has placed hope on the vaccination progress to bring back the socio-economic "normal," this article explores how the bioeconomy can enhance the resilience and sustainability of bio-based, food, and energy systems in the post-COVID-19 era. The proposed recovery approach integrates technological innovations, environment, ecosystem services, "biocities," food, rural economies, and tourism. The importance of integrating culture, arts, and the fashion industry as part of the recovery is underlined towards building a better bioeconomy that, together with environmental safeguards, promotes socio-cultural and economic innovations. This integration could be achieved supporting communities and stakeholders to diversify their activities by combining sustainable production with decarbonization, stimulating private investments in this direction and monitoring the resulting impact of mitigation measures. Food systems should become more resilient in order to allow adapting rapidly to severe crises and future shocks, while it is important to increase circularity towards the valorization of waste, the integration of different processes within the biorefinery concept and the production of bio-based products and biofuels.

Operation of marine diesel engines on biogenic fuels: modification of emissions and resulting climate effects.

The modification of emissions of climate-sensitive exhaust compounds such as CO(2), NO(x), hydrocarbons, and particulate matter from medium-speed marine diesel engines was studied for a set of fossil and biogenic fuels. Applied fossil fuels were the reference heavy fuel oil (HFO) and the low-sulfur marine gas oil (MGO); biogenic fuels were palm oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, and animal fat. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to the production of biogenic fuels were treated by means of a fuel life cycle analysis which included land use changes associated with the growth of energy plants. Emissions of CO(2) and NO(x) per kWh were found to be similar for fossil fuels and biogenic fuels. PM mass emission was reduced to 10-15% of HFO emissions for all low-sulfur fuels including MGO as a fossil fuel. Black carbon emissions were reduced significantly to 13-30% of HFO. Changes in emissions were predominantly related to particulate sulfate, while differences between low-sulfur fossil fuels and low-sulfur biogenic fuels were of minor significance. GHG emissions from the biogenic fuel life cycle (FLC) depend crucially on energy plant production conditions and have the potential of shifting the overall GHG budget from positive to negative compared to fossil fuels.