Most energy system studies of the UK indicate a strong role for bioenergy in the coming decades, especially if the UK is to meet its climate change mitigation ambitions. However, there is a need to understand how bioenergy systems can be implement without negative sustainability-related implacts. There is therefore a need for multi-scale systems analyses to support the understanding of these inter-related issues and to support decision-making around land use, interactions with food production and acceleration of bioenergy technologies, while ensuring that a range of sustainability measures are quantified and that minimum standards can be guaranteed. This project will build on bioenergy system models (Imperial College, RRes, Soton) partners) and combine it with other models, including the UK-TIMES model (UCL), ecosystem and resource models (Soton, Manchester) and international trade models (UCL). This toolkit will be used to identify robust and promising options for the UK, including land use, resources and technologies. This overall modelling framework would be able to determine which value chains can best contribute to a technologically efficient, low cost and low carbon UK energy system. Configuring the model to avoid the use of side constraints to limit the amount of land available for bioenergy and bio-based materials/chemicals will lead to a better understanding of how biomass production can be intercalated into existing UK energy and agricultural infrastructures. This framework will be used to explore the bioenergy value chains and technology developments most relevant to the UK under different scenarios (e.g. high/low food security, high/low biomass imports etc.). The coupling to wider UK energy models as well as global resource models/data will ensure coherence in the overall systems and scenarios developed and to ensure clarity in the role of bioenergy in the wider UK energy system. Resource and technology models and information on future improvements as well as requirements for adoption and diffusion will be incorporated into the model. Sample value chains developed will also be assessed for their wider ecosystem impacts within the UK, particularly in terms of the change in expected key ecosystem services overall arising from changes in land use against a reference scenario. The implications of technological improvements in system critical technologies such as 2G biofuels, bio-SNG gas and the provision of renewable heat will also be considered. The linking of value chain and system models will help to examine the opportunities and indirect impacts of increased biomass use for energy and chemicals and critically evaluate mitigation strategies for GHG emissions and resource depletion, and will feed into a wider policy analysis activity that will examine the dynamics of changing system infrastructure at intermediate time periods between now and 2050. The key outcomes will include: - Understanding the potential and risks of different biomass technologies, and the interfaces between competing requirements for land use - Understanding cost reductions, lifecycle environmental profiles and system implications of bioenergy and biorenewables - Identifying and modelling the impact of greater system integration -integrated energy, food, by-product systems, and cascading use of biomass - Understanding what it would take to achieve a significant (e.g. 10%) contribution from biomass in the UK - and identify the pre-requisites/critical path for mobilisation (resources, policies, institutions and timescales). - Developing scenarios describing what policies, infrastructure, institutions etc. would be needed and where - Lifecycle, techno- and socio-economic and environmental/ecosystem, evaluation of the value chains associated with a material level of bioenergy in the UK

Driven by a range of environmental challenges e.g. climate change, energy and material insecurity, a transition from the current fossil-based to a future bio-based economy is expected to evolve progressively and bring a post-petroleum era. The UK government has set out transition policies and strategies to adapt to and mitigate future environmental change and biorenewable carbon resources will play a significant role to meet UK 2050 greenhouse gas reduction targets and support national adaptation efforts. The current EU bioeconomy is estimated to be worth around 2 trillion euros and a wide range of bio-products generated from biomass resources bring great potential. Unlike other renewable sources e.g. tidal or wind energy, biomass provides flexible options to overcome supply instability and un-predictability by deriving thermal and electrical energy on demand and offering potential for transport fuel or bio-chemical generation. Resource assessment shows that the UK biomass could meet almost half of domestic energy needs by 2050 without compromising land use. Biomass-derived value-added chemicals also represent a significant market; with current annual turnover of £60 billion, the UK chemical sector is described as the 'heart of the green economy development'. Such plethora of bio-renewable products can be converted efficiently and sustainably via well-designed integrated biorefinery systems. However, human use of and impacts on the biosphere are now exceeding the multiple environmental limits. Thus the future biorenewable deployment calls for an quantitative transition modelling tool bringing resilience and sustainability thinking approach in biorenewable system design to increase the overall capacity for tackling environmental stresses or socio-economic changes over the coming decades. This project aims to develop an open-source biorenewable system model from user-perspectives and provide insights into sustainable design of the future biorenewable systems, which best adapt to and mitigate future changes, contribute to UK sustainability and resilience agenda and support bioeconomy evolution. Under ReSBio, seven research streams are organized in work packages (WP) that run in parallel. WP1 will engage policy-makers, industrial stakeholders, scientists and engineers to scope the model context and objectives under UK sustainability and resilience context and define the model functions, indicators, boundaries, and case studies from user perspectives. Building on WP1 model functional specifications, WP2 focuses on the open-source model development with the user-oriented architecture and integrating sustainability evaluation, biogeochemistry models and optimisation model. WP3 expands the WP2 work and highlights the biomass resource modelling and agro-ecosystem C/N cycle simulation by building empirical database and re-parameterising the plant growth sub-model. WP4 focuses on the environmental and economic performance evaluation of the promising technologies and the biorefinery system integration configurations. WP5 aims to explore strategic design of representative UK case studies over multiple time periods under future environmental changes and demographic and economic trends. WP6 will adapt and apply the developed model in representative overseas case studies which are of relevance to the UK. To ensure ReSBio impacts, WP7 is dedicated to research output synthesis and project dissemination. ReSBio will help to understand the research merit of biomass and conversion technologies for UK biorenewable value chains under future changes and identify the sustainable and resilient design for UK biorenewables systems over next decades. ReSBio will generate new insights into the biorenewable potential in future UK infrastructure transition strategies and bio-economy.

Sustainability is defined as "the ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Achieving sustainable development is the key global challenge of the 21st Century. It can only be met with the adoption of a range of new sustainable technologies. Sustainable chemical technologies are those involving chemistry as the central science. They span a wide range of areas, many of which make major impacts on society. Key sustainable chemical technologies include: use of renewable resources and biotechnology (e.g., making fuels, chemicals and products from biomass rather than petrochemicals); clean energy conversion and storage (e.g., solar energy, the hydrogen economy and advanced battery technologies); sustainable use of water (e.g., membrane technologies for water purification and upcycling of nutrients in waste water); developing sustainable processes and manufacturing (e.g., making production of chemicals, pharmaceuticals and plastics more energy-efficient and less wasteful through developing sustainable supply chains as well as through technological advances); and developing advanced healthcare technologies (e.g., developing new drugs, medical treatments and devices). To address these needs, we propose a Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Sustainable Chemical Technologies. The £5.08m requested from the EPSRC will be supplemented by £2.0m from the University and a £4.13m industrial contribution. The CDT will place fundamental concepts of sustainability at the core of a broad spectrum of research and training at the interfaces of chemistry, chemical engineering, biotechnology and manufacturing. This will respond to a national and global need for highly skilled and talented scientists and engineers in the area as well as training tomorrow's leaders as advocates for sustainable innovation. All students will receive foundation training to supplement their undergraduate knowledge, in addition to training in Sustainable Chemical Technologies. Broader training and practice in public engagement and creativity will encourage responsible innovation and attention to ethical, societal, and business aspects of research. They will all conduct high quality and challenging research directed by supervisory teams comprising joint supervisors from at least two of the disciplines of chemistry, chemical engineering, biotechnology and management as well as an industrial and/or international advisor. The broad research themes encompass the areas of: Renewable Resources and Biotechnology, Energy and Water, Processes and Manufacturing and Healthcare Technologies. Participation from key industry partners will address stakeholder needs, and partner institutions in the USA, Germany, Australia, and South Korea will provide world-leading international input, along with exciting opportunities for student placements and internships. The CDT will utilize dedicated physical and virtual space for the students as well as a supervisory base of more than fifty academics. Building on the success of the current Doctoral Training Centre and evolving to keep pace with the growing importance of biotechnology and manufacturing to UK industry, the centre will provide a dynamic and truly multidisciplinary environment for innovative PhD research and training.

This world-leading Centre for Doctoral Training in Bioenergy will focus on delivering the people to realise the potential of biomass to provide secure, affordable and sustainable low carbon energy in the UK and internationally. Sustainably-sourced bioenergy has the potential to make a major contribution to low carbon pathways in the UK and globally, contributing to the UK's goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 and the international mitigation target of a maximum 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise. Bioenergy can make a significant contribution to all three energy sectors: electricity, heat and transport, but faces challenges concerning technical performance, cost effectiveness, ensuring that it is sustainably produced and does not adversely impact food security and biodiversity. Bioenergy can also contribute to social and economic development in developing countries, by providing access to modern energy services and creating job opportunities both directly and in the broader economy. Many of the challenges associated with realising the potential of bioenergy have engineering and physical sciences at their core, but transcend traditional discipline boundaries within and beyond engineering. This requires an effective whole systems research training response and given the depth and breadth of the bioenergy challenge, only a CDT will deliver the necessary level of integration. Thus, the graduates from the CDT in Bioenergy will be equipped with the tools and skills to make intelligent and informed, responsible choices about the implementation of bioenergy, and the growing range of social and economic concerns. There is projected to be a large absorptive capacity for trained individuals in bioenergy, far exceeding current supply. A recent report concerning UK job creation in bioenergy sectors concluded that there "may be somewhere in the region of 35-50,000 UK jobs in bioenergy by 2020" (NNFCC report for DECC, 2012). This concerned job creation in electricity production, heat, and anaerobic digestion (AD) applications of biomass. The majority of jobs are expected to be technical, primarily in the engineering and construction sectors during the building and operation of new bioenergy facilities. To help develop and realise the potential of this sector, the CDT will build strategically on our research foundation to deliver world-class doctoral training, based around key areas: [1] Feedstocks, pre-processing and safety; [2] Conversion; [3] Utilisation, emissions and impact; [4] Sustainability and Whole systems. Theme 1 will link feedstocks to conversion options, and Themes 2 and 3 include the core underpinning science and engineering research, together with innovation and application. Theme 4 will underpin this with a thorough understanding of the whole energy system including sustainability, social, economic public and political issues, drawing on world-leading research centres at Leeds. The unique training provision proposed, together with the multidisciplinary supervisory team will ensure that students are equipped to become future leaders, and responsible innovators in the bioenergy sector.