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Jim Philp, Policy Analyst INDUSTRIAL AND INNOVATION ECOSYSTEMS IN SELECTED OECD COUNTRIES
Jim Philp, Policy Analyst
INDUSTRIAL AND INNOVATION ECOSYSTEMS
IN SELECTED OECD COUNTRIES
BIENNIUM 2017-2018
INNOVATION ECOSYSTEMS IN THE BIOECONOMY:
A SUMMARY OF CASE STUDIES
CONTRIBUTING COUNTRIES: BE (FLANDERS), CA, CN, FI, FR, IT, JP,
NO, SE, US
EXTRA WORKSHOP CONTRIBUTED BY POLAND
Present/frequent
• Climate change and climate obligations (nearly all)
• Lowering/ending oil dependence (especially Japan, Sweden)
• Rural development/regeneration
• Brownfield redevelopment/revitalising chemical industry (especially Canada and Italy)
• Resource efficiency (all countries)
• Waste valorisation (most case studies, especially China)
Drivers: check policy directions match the objectives
Feedstock/Technology
push
Market pull Push and pull
Local access to feedstocks Mandates and targets Metrics, definitions,
terminology
International access to
feedstocks
Public procurement Skills and education
R&D subsidy Standards Regional clusters
Pilot and demonstrator
support
Labels, certification Public acceptance, raising
awareness
Flagship financial support Fossil carbon taxes and
incentives
Governance and regulation
Tax incentives for industrial
R&D
Removing fossil fuel
subsidies
Technology clusters
SME and start-up support
A significant emphasis on supply side measures
• Specific, targeted policy beyond National Strategies (Flanders)
• How do governments measure value-for-money from clusters?
• Where are the mid-sized companies? (e.g. Finland, Norway)
• Pilot and demonstration phase funding (Norway and Sweden examples especially noteworthy)
• Environmental/social objectives not joined to industrial policy (see Sweden)
• A balance between supply and demand (market) measures
• Skills and education a high priority
• Small country issues of “technology leakage” (Norway, Finland)
• Not much emphasis on biomass cascading
• Biotechnology – almost completely missing (except US)
• Bigger picture: little attention is paid to C price and taxation (Sweden and Norway notable exceptions)
• Waste regulation reform: every speaker at the final workshop in Rimini, Italy
Policy issues to be addressed
Hokkaido, Japan: Shimokawa Biomass Town
Norway: the “systemic challenge”
Scotland: IBioIC, an innovation centre tasked with
forming ecosystems
Germany: CLIB 2021, international outreach
1 POME is palm oil mill effluent
Edmonton, Canada
Natural gas; waste
wood
Biofuels; biomaterials
Goiânia, Brazil
Vinasse
Biogas; biomethane
Duisburg, Germany
Shanghai, China
CO from steel mill
Biofuels; biomaterials
Borneo, Malaysia
Waste wood; POME1
Biofuels; biomaterials
Tambov, Russia
Agro residues;
Biofuel,
biomaterials;
Region
Carbon source
Product
Kircher (2016). Innovation for a sustainable bioeconomy. OECD workshop, May 2016.
France: The most advanced integrated rural biorefinery
in the world?
Credit: Dutartre –Procethol2G
CEBB
Intellectual Property (IP) and mechanisms to work with industry
1. Collaborative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs)
– Larger engagements, IP ownership follows inventorship, the Industrial Partner has option to negotiate exclusive license to ABF (co-)invented IP in specific field(s) of use
2. Strategic Partnership Programs (SPPs)
– Smaller engagements, Industrial Partner retains all IP rights from the work
Active industry engagements
• Kiverdi: Progress towards a new model chemolithoautotrophic host
• LanzaTech: Data integration and deep learning for continuous gas fermentation optimization
• Lygos: Implementing a DBTL P. kudriavzevii engineering cycle for production of an organic acid product
• TeselaGen: Integration of ABF informatic modules with TeselaGen’s BIOCAD/CAM platform
• Visolis: Production of high-value chemicals from renewable feedstocks
US: Agile Biofoundry (ABF), California
BIENNIUM 2019-2020 ENGINEERING BIOLOGY PUBLIC
INFRASTRUCTURES
Why so little commercialisation of engineering biology?
• Lack of standards, lack of reproducibility and reliability
• Complexity in biology necessitates a transition from a data-poor science to a data-rich science
• Need to embrace the engineering design cycle and break from OFAT
• Automation and digitalisation takes out human error
• Dedicated high-level programming languages to remove lumpen human intervention between ‘test’ and ‘redesign’
• Rapidly increasing need for data storage and curation
• A complete re-think of biotechnology skills and education
“Biotechnology takes too long, costs too much and fails too often to effectively address the global challenges that must be solved”
Design
BuildTest
Produce
Initial design
Engineering biology and the infrastructure challenge
Joint Imperial College/OECD workshop, London, Sep 21/2018
Is the (public) biofoundry the critical infrastructure need?
Host selection
Pathway selection
Pathway analysis
Experimental design
Machine learning
Host modification
X
X
Parts assembly
Combinatorial assembly
Automation
Screening Analytical
Design Build
Test
Lab scale
Pilot
Demonstrator
Production Scale-up or
Scale-out
Scale-down
Fermentation
Biofoundry Biorefinery
Modified from Kitney et al. (2019). Trends in Biotechnology 37, 917-920
Public biofoundries are confined to a small number of
(elite) facilities
OECD (2018). Engineering biology: from the lab to products. Imperial College, Sep 21/2018.
• Five biofoundries
• Six basic research centres
• One industrial translation centre
• Public investment: ~£350M
• 180 synthetic biology companies
• x6 leverage of public investment
UK: A network of public engineering biology platforms
Bristol London
Manchester Liverpool
Cambridge
Norwich
Newcastle
Edinburgh
Warwick
Nottingham
New public-private alliances
https://roadmap.ebrc.org/
Global Biofoundries Alliance
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10079-2
