Page 71 - Biorefinery 2030 Future Prospects for the Bioeconomy (2015)

1 The Concept of Biorefinery 39

Fig. 2.9 Interaction and cohesion between players on the Bazancourt-Pomacle site [Moreover,
the involvement of the local authorities is echoed in their support for the academic chairs and in the
setting up of the European Biorefinery Institute (IEB), the new name for the site]

Research is at the heart of the biorefinery’s structure. The structure is organised
at different levels (Fig. 2.9): academic, research and innovation, and overall site
level. The site also interacts with the Industry and Agro-resource Competitiveness
Cluster (IAR) 25 (see above), a world-scale cluster that is very dynamic in the
Champagne-Ardenne and Picardy regions.
All these dimensions make the Bazancourt-Pomacle site an integrated
biorefinery, whose interest lies in the diversity of its outputs, the optimised use of
its inputs and its industrial ecology 26 (c.f. Fig. 2.10).
This diversity of outputs observed in the site’s overall variety of products is not
necessarily present at the level of each individual company. Although some firms
on the site specialise in the production of a single type of output (human foodstuffs,
animal feed or biofuel), 27 thanks to the biorefinery’s ecosystem, others are capable
of producing all three types of outputs (c.f. Table 2.2).

25
http://www.iar-pole.com
26
This notion will be discussed in detail in Chap. 3.
27
This division between human foodstuffs, animal feed and biofuel is commonly made in the
literature and refers to the “FFF: Food, Feed, Fuel” debate. To grow their raw materials, biofuels
use a little under 6 % of agricultural land, or 1.7 million hectares in 2010, including 1.45 million
hectares for biodiesel and 250,000 ha bioethanol. Nonetheless, after 2008 and the dramatic rise in
the price of agricultural raw materials, there has been criticism of the competition existing between
biofuel production and that of human or animal foodstuffs. This notion of competition for arable
land and its potential impact on prices is in fact not clear-cut, as shown in several recent studies
´
(Sources: Press Release by the French Court of Auditors: Evaluation d’une politique publique: la
politique d’aide aux biocarburants [Assessment of a public policy: the policy of support for