Bioeconomy

To go to the roots of this term, one must go back half a century to Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s theories: the Rumanian economist strongly advocated the inclusion of the principles of physics, starting from the second law of thermodynamics, in the economic science.

Therefore Georgescu-Roegen believed that the production process of all tangible goods depletes the amount of energy available in the future, hence the capacity of manufacturing more goods.

This idea gave rise to a number of production techniques targeted at using natural resources in a sustainable way and which was also quite successful among decision-makers. The European Commission, for instance, speaks of bioeconomy by defining it as an “economy based on the sustainable use of renewable natural resources and on their transformation into services or final/intermediate goods".

Bioeconomy, then, may include traditional sectors (agriculture, forestry, fishery) but also other innovative sectors such as biotechnology and bioenergy.

Together, according to an analysis by Clever Consult, in Europe alone this business already account for a 2,000 billion € business with over 21 million employees.

It is a common opinion that thanks to its innovative potential, bioeconomy can stand as an answer to global challenges in terms of reducing the environmental impact of human activities, fighting climate change and countering world hunger.