Advancement of sustainability assessment knowledge: final

The goal of achieving a net-zero emissions European economy by 2050 demands a shift from linear, fossil-based systems to circular, bio-based systems. This transition is vital for meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and reconciling environmental protection with sustainable growth. However, the complexity of the transition relies on societal transformations, cutting-edge technologies, and multi-actor processes, requiring a new societal and economic framework and policy priorities that align with the European Green Deal. In this context, monitoring systems, modelling techniques and data are key tools to support policy making and facilitate a better understanding of the complexity, trade-offs, and potential pathways to achieve a sustainable transition to a circular bio-based economy. This report presents the results of the work carried out in SUSTRACK T2.2, which builds upon other tasks already carried out in the project. First, D1.1 gave a comprehensive overview of the environmental, economic, social and cultural limitations of the linear, fossil-based economy. It also identified gaps in overcoming these barriers in terms of knowledge, practical implementation and opportunities, and mentioned requiring effective strategies and policies, and collaboration among policymakers, research institutes and public opinion leaders to promote sustainable developments. Second, D1.2 identified and confirmed challenges, via a comprehensive stakeholder consultation, that impede progress towards a sustainable circular biobased economy (CBBE), encompassing the barriers identified in D1.1. It highlighted cultural barriers (e.g. lack of communication regarding the advantages of bio-based products, consumer confusion, mistrust due to ambiguous sustainability claims), economic challenges (relatively high costs and risks involved in setting up circular bio-based systems), environmental issues (e.g. concerns on the limited availability of biomass, lack of knowledge and data for assessing environmental impacts of biobased produced), policy barriers (e.g. missing supportive and/or complex regulatory framework, conflicting policy goals), structural discrepancies (e.g. lack of harmonised waste collection systems and infrastructure, lack of established markets and value chains for by-products), and technology issues (e.g. immature technologies, insufficient capacities of end-of-life product treatments). Third, D2.1 provided a review of existing knowledge for monitoring and evaluating the transition to circular biobased systems. It identified major gaps across indicators and approaches generally used to monitor and evaluate the bioeconomy across the three major policy-level analyses: 1) micro level (products, processes, companies); 2) meso level (city/regions); and 3) macro level (world, Europe, countries). Limitations in data collection and data quality represent major obstacles for the assessment and monitoring of bioeconomy, especially within the environmental and social dimensions. Other methodological gaps call for a proper way to clearly differentiate between the bio-based share and the non-biobased share “impacts”, as well as linking bioeconomy models across the meso- and/or macro-level, including the need for bio-based business models that clearly depict trade-offs with the three sustainability objectives. Fourth, the policy brief in D5.1 highlighted current barriers in relation to the transition to a CBBE and which possible policy opportunities exist to tackle these barriers. Building on aforementioned work, T2.2 focuses on the development of new indicators applicable for monitoring and evaluating the transition to circular bio-based systems, which were identified as gaps across the set of indicators that emerged in D2.1. That report provided a list of research gaps and recommendations to advance bioeconomy monitoring and evaluation at the different policy levels. Three of these research gaps have been selected for further exploration in Task 2.2: • Governance indicator(s): to give insight into how stakeholders work together in achieving common strategic goals of a city/local/regional area, like via cluster organisations, industrial/regional/ministerial corporations, existence of circular bio-based economy strategic plans. • Monetisation of externalities indicator(s): to distinguish between market price and inherent value for externalities, like costs of greenhouse gas emission. This must permit a fairer comparison between fossil-based and bio-based systems. • LCA-based indicator(s): to integrate key impact categories for the bioeconomy, like (in)direct land-use issues, biodiversity, deforestation, soil/water quality, and related carbon emissions. Knowledge has been developed on how these research gaps could be tackled, taking into account issues like system boundaries, methodological approach and data needs. The newly gathered insights could benefit the monitoring and assessment framework that has been developed in T2.3. Also, the enhanced framework will be supportive of the case studies that are analysed in WP3 and the definition of policy recommendations in WP5.