BeBOP project presented in Barcelona at the Joint Symposium From Waste to Sustainable Fuels

On 28–29 May 2026, ECODESIGN took part in the Joint Symposium “From Waste to Sustainable Fuels” in Barcelona, a two-day event co-organised by seven EU-funded projects working towards a shared goal: turning waste streams into sustainable fuels for hard-to-abate sectors. Representing the BeBOP project together with Marcin Siedlecki (RIC), Stephan Schmidt (ECODESIGN) contributed to the event and presented BeBOP’s circularity framework as a methodology that reaches well beyond a single project.

In the symposium session on “Advanced Sustainability & Circularity Frameworks,” ECODESIGN presented the seven-phase circularity framework developed in BeBOP’s Work Package 4. While the framework was created to embed circular economy principles into the BeBOP biomass-and-power-to-methanol process, its real value lies in its transferability to similar processes. It generally fits well to emerging Power-and-Biomass-to-X (PBtX) processes at low-to-medium technology readiness level, where circularity decisions made early in development have the greatest leverage. The methodology guides a project from mapping circular economy strategies (narrow, slow, close, regenerate) onto its process stages, through stakeholder workshops and the derivation of quantitative circularity indicators, to actionable recommendations for scale-ups. Sharing it with an audience of peer projects, all working through similar questions of how to make next-generation fuel pathways more resource efficient, was a valuable opportunity to exchange experiences – and to explore how a structured, repeatable approach to circularity might be useful beyond BeBOP. The recovery of valuable elements from the solid residues of biomass thermal conversion – contributed by BeBOP partner Pro-Akademia – rounded out BeBOP’s circularity story at the event.

What made the symposium particularly valuable was the sheer diversity of approaches gathered around one common goal. Seven projects, investigating different approaches for the successful transition to renewable fuels, demonstrated that the solutions are already here — from negative-emission biofuels and e-fuels to biomass valorisation. The long-term challenge uniting all projects is moving from innovation at a small scale to market implementation.

Alongside BeBOP, the participating projects were:

• Bio-MeGaFuel: developing a full-chain, highly efficient process for zero-emission methanol production from biomass via chemical looping gasification coupled with membrane reactors.
• FLEXBY: producing advanced biofuels from industrial sludge and microalgae grown in wastewater through an innovative, cost-efficient microwave-assisted pyrolysis process.
• FUEL-UP: transforming 100% biogenic forest and waste residues into sustainable aviation and marine fuels to decarbonise the transport sectors that are hardest to abate.
• Fuels-C: building an integrated platform of cost- and energy-efficient conversion technologies that turn biogenic residues and CO₂ into liquid and gaseous biofuels validated for direct use in fuel cells.
• PYSOLO: preparing the ground for a fully renewable process that combines concentrated solar power with biomass pyrolysis to maximise bio-oil, biochar and pyrogas yields while minimising CO₂ emissions.
• TEAPOTS: giving agri-food players a modular, flexible solution that valorises hard-to-treat agricultural waste into renewable energy and biochar to meet local, seasonal energy demand.

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