Biobased economy
Within the project ‘Borderless Biobased Education’, fourteen Flemish and Dutch partners are working on the development of demand-oriented education and in-service training programs at secondary, higher and university level. The biobased economy offers opportunities for economic growth and new employment. ‘Biobased’ is even one of the three top clusters and driver for innovation and specialization in the Dutch-Flemish Delta Region. In the biobased economy, green raw materials are taking over from fossil fuels.
These “new” raw materials are used as materials, chemicals and energy. This creates new developments and business opportunities in sectors such as agro-food, construction, chemicals, textiles and maritime. In addition, the biobased economy ensures sustainable development through the use of reusable materials. The two main challenges to actually get the promising biobased economy off the ground in the border region are:
- Awareness of companies with regard to the opportunities that exist in this field and, linked to this, the creation of demand for research and facilities.
- Training suitable, technical and techno-economic personnel, in both qualitative and quantitative terms.
Within the ‘Borderless Biobased Education’ project, fourteen Flemish and Dutch partners are therefore working on the development of demand-oriented education and in-service training programs at secondary, higher and university level. They also invest in better training and research facilities for education and business. The project will run from November 1, 2016 to October 31, 2019 and was realized with financial support from Interreg Flanders-Netherlands and various co-financiers.
The results of the GBO project can be found at www.biobasedonderwijs.eu/result. Here you can download the research into the market demand for biobased education (under the heading market demand) and an inventory of the cross-border research and training infrastructure (under the heading infrastructure). Information about the digital platform and the films made by GBO can also be found here (under the heading knowledge sharing).
For biobased teaching materials, please visit www.biobasednetwork.eu. Here are all teaching modules and MOOCs developed by GBO partners.
Targets
More specifically, the objectives of Borderless Biobased Education are:
- Mapping market demand
- Developing education and training programs in secondary, higher and university education
- Creating and making better use of cross-border training and research facilities
- Increasing the exchange of educational modules, teachers and students by creating cross-border knowledge networks and platforms
- The cross-border bringing together of companies, sectors and educational institutions in the biobased economy
- Increasing the inflow and outflow of professionals in technical and techno-economic training for the biobased sector
Biobased supply in pictures
A European platform where everything related to biobased education comes together. A place where a complete range of biobased educational materials, internships and facilities can be found. According to Ralph Simons, director of the Center of Expertise Biobased Economy (CoE BBE), this should certainly be possible in the future. In the Borderless Biobased Education project, the first steps are being taken to achieve this in a collaboration between the Netherlands and Flanders at present. As a partner in this project, the CoE BBE is responsible for the aforementioned biobased platform. Collecting and bringing knowledge is completely central to this. This project focuses on the offer in the Netherlands and the Flanders region.