Kick-off meeting of FRONTSH1P, a European project as a frontrunner approach for a transition to a circular & resilient future

The FRONTSH1P project (A FRONTrunner approach Transition to a circular & resilient future: deployment of systemic solutions with the support of local clusters and the development of regional community-based innovation schemes), a new project from the final calls of the EU Horizon 2020 program coordinated by the company K-FLEX Polska SP ZOO (Gdynia, Poland) was launched with a kick-off meeting on 16^th to 18^th of November 2021 in the two cities of Uniejów and Lodz, Poland.

The Margarita Salas Center for Biological Research (CSIC) participates in this Innovation Action (IA), which is granted with a total of € 16.1 million. Work on this project at the CIB Margarita Salas will be directed by Prof. José Luis García López, Head of the Environmental Biotechnology Group together with Dr. Jorge Barriuso Maicas, a senior research scientist at the Biotechnology for Lignocellulosic Biomass Group. The FRONTSH1P project is a collaboration of 34 partners from universities, technological centers, industry (SMEs and large industry), and associations from 9 countries (Poland, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany). 

FRONTSH1P aims at ensuring the green and just transition of the Polish Lodzkie Region towards decarbonization and territorial regeneration through demonstration (at TRL7) of highly replicable circular systemic models and aims to create a territorial cluster of circular initiatives to accelerate the transition to a greener, resilient economy, able to provide sustainable responses to the need of the involved regions. The proposed model will be implemented and demonstrated in Lodzkie Region, where key territorial partners, and particularly the regional institutions, the scientific partners, the representatives of civil society and industry groups, will play a relevant role in promoting, facilitating, and enabling systemic and circular economy at a regional scale. The involvement of those relevant actors will allow the promotion of the circular economy and to reach relevant actors, such as municipalities, companies, consumers, and civil society, which will be engaged in a participatory approach to collect needs and perceived constraints. From this activity, the cluster system will identify and define a circular economy strategy, with clear objectives, measurable targets, and a proper monitoring method. Moreover, the cluster will facilitate collaboration and cooperation among relevant actors for boosting circularity.

CIB-CSIC´s works will be carried out within a work package dedicated to Circular Systemic Solutions for Food and Feed and consist in improving the pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass by enzymatic hydrolysis with commercial fungal enzymatic cocktails in combination with CSIC proprietary enzymes, and the subsequent fermentation of the resulting sugars with different kinds of engineered oleaginous microorganisms (bacteria and yeast).

The project will foresee activities, such as the definition of regulatory instruments aimed at accelerating the transition to a circular economy creating a Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) in which the proposed systemic solution is embedded.

More information:

Website: https://frontsh1p.eu/