Main conference Day TWOThursday, 8 October 2026 - CET (Central European Time, GMT+01:00)

Ecoplanta is a pioneering industrial project that transforms non-recyclable waste into renewable and circular methanol, giving a second life to materials that would otherwise end up in landfill or incineration. As a first-of-a-kind facility in Europe, it demonstrates how advanced waste-to-fuels technologies can be deployed at scale, combining circularity and decarbonisation. Integrated within an existing industrial complex, Ecoplanta showcases how innovation, partnership and industrial integration can unlock new value chains while supporting the transition to renewable fuels and circular materials.

• NATO’s current and future liquid fuel demand
• Integration of biofuels into the defence supply chain
• Challenges and opportunities for the future

Explore how retrofitting existing first-generation ethanol plants offers a cost-effective pathway to advanced fuel production, unlocking new opportunities for sustainable ethanol while leveraging established infrastructure.

• Regional Production Capacity: Overview of Poland's biofuel production infrastructure and capacity utilization
• Feedstock Availability: Agricultural feedstock supply chains in Poland and CEE region (cereals, sugar beet, rapeseed)
• Market Competition: Balancing domestic production with imports from other EU member states and third countries
• Cross-Border Trade: Logistics and regulatory considerations for biofuel trade within the EU single market

This synopsis provides the slide-by-slide framework for the presentation: European Union: Driving Sustainability — The Role of the EU in Global Ethanol Production. It defines the content structure, key messages, and data requirements for each slide. Statistical data, charts, and speaker notes will be added in a subsequent revision.

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is emerging as a critical solution for decarbonizing the aviation industry, offering a lower-carbon alternative to fossil fuels that works in existing aircraft while other transport sectors transition to electrification.

The transition to a circular bioeconomy demands innovative systems that transform agricultural wastes into valuable energy carriers while reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Rice processing generates substantial starch-rich byproducts, which often represent a disposal burden rather than a resource. Meanwhile, agricultural operations in Italy consume approximately 5 billion litres of agricultural diesel annually, with grain drying alone accounting for 45-55% of energy costs in rice mills. Agri-E’s technology addresses this dual challenge through an innovative Consolidated BioProcessing (CBP) approach that converts starch-rich agricultural residues directly into bioethanol without the addition of external enzymes.

The technological core is our proprietary yeast strain, which can process complex waste into bioethanol in a single step. This strain achieves ethanol titers exceeding 130 g/L from unripe rice at 35% (w/v) substrate loading, with yields approaching the theoretical maximum. Recent scale-up at pilot level (TRL 6) confirmed a volumetric productivity of 1.7 g/L/h at 50 L scale, a 70% improvement over conventional process configurations. The CBP approach eliminates the need for thermal pretreatment and commercial enzyme cocktails, reducing operating costs by 20-30% compared to conventional Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation (SSF) approaches.