Earlier this year, an innovation developed under BIOCON-CO2 featured on the European Commission’s Innovation Radar. This is great news for project partners from the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RUG, Netherlands), Stichting Wageningen Research (WFBR, Netherlands) and Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB, Spain) who were identified as key innovators for this body of work.
The innovation, ‘Multienzymatic system for converting CO2 and ethanol into lactic acid for biodegradable polymers’ will play an important role in realising the goals of the BIOCON-CO2, which aims to develop a flexible and industrially viable platform to biologically transform CO2 produced from the iron-steel industry into added-value chemicals and plastics. The innovation was classified as “business ready”. This categorisation is given to innovations for which concrete market-oriented ideas are in place (e.g. market studies, business plans) but for which further progress on tech development is required.
The Innovation Radar is a European Commission initiative to identify high potential innovations and innovators in EU-funded research and innovation projects. It aims to promote the outputs of EU innovation and make them visible to all stakeholders. By increasing accessibility to new innovations, the Innovation Radar encourages the development of a dynamic ecosystem of incubators, entrepreneurs, funding agencies and investors that can help get EU-funded innovations to market faster.