What makes Industrial Biotechnology attractive to DuPont?
DuPont has always been at the forefront of scientific discoveries. Engineers, biologists, and chemists; for over 200 years, we hire the best scientists to help us unveil the secrets of nature and develop solutions to enhance our daily lives. DuPont started the synthetic materials revolution, which radically changed the way we live, work, travel and communicate in the second half of the last century. Biotechnology is one of the latest scientific tools we have integrated into our broad scientific knowledge. It has the possibility to open more doors for new and unprecedented innovations, which can better respond to the economic and societal environment we live in today. Already today, through the use of biotechnology, we are able to develop improved solutions, starting from agriculture, and continuing to industrial applications to make materials, textiles, fuels and a wide range of other products. And we believe this is only the beginning.
To what extent does growing consumer environmental concern represent an opportunity for industrial biotechnology?
To satisfy human needs globally, especially with a population predicted to reach 9 billion by 2050, we need more: more food, more feed for livestock, more energy, and more raw materials to manufacture essential consumer goods. But producing more in the same way is not a viable option for our environment. We must rely on innovation and new technologies which offer the opportunity to help us go in this necessary direction, and today this includes the tools of biotechnology, applied to a number of fields, from agriculture to industry to healthcare developments. Opportunities are already many, and many more than we can imagine today will be discovered as our knowledge increases. Biotechnology is helping to increase agricultural productivity, a key factor to expand modern farming practices, and therefore production from existing acreage. It is only in making better use of existing arable land that agriculture can continue to provide for our food, feed, material and fuel needs. For example, DuPont is working in a joint venture with Danisco to develop as rapidly as possible cellulosic technology which will take non food crops or biomass and enable fermentation processes for both biofuels and other bio-based products. Biotechnology is used to produce a wide variety of fine and bulk chemicals, pharmaceuticals, biocolorants, solvents, bioplastics, vitamins, food additives, biopesticides, enzymes and biofuels such as bioethanol and biodiesel. Biological production processes - white biotechnology - are becoming a key contributor to green chemistry, generating savings in water, energy and raw materials use.
What Challenges does the Industrial Biotechnology sector currently face?
Main challenges are: society’s dependency on oil, the fact that intensive R&D is required, and some critical skills are in short supply. There is also a general lack of awareness. All this generates a perception of uncertainty around costs and benefits. Government and industry have to work together, and they also have to ensure that citizens’ concerns for safety and sustainability are listened to, understood, and taken into account. Such a radical production change also requires developing the know-how and infrastructure for growing, harvesting, transporting, storing and processing feedstock.
It is also important that we consider and have a clear understanding of the carbon impact of the various elements of this new value chain, from the production of feedstocks through their harvest and transportation through the biorefinery process and industrial use. This is typically done through life cycle modelling, which is an area under rapid development and where standards are emerging, but need further development and strengthening.
What do you see as competitive or rival technologies for industrial biotechnology?
Currently, I see only complementary technologies to answer effectively the competitive and sustainability challenges we are facing. With the contribution of industrial biotechnology, for example, we are developing sustainable biofuels. These fuels will be a key technology towards a more sustainable energy source, but they will not be the only one; we’ll have to use solar, wind, and other technologies, and choose what makes the most sense in a given situation. In the future, other new technologies will complement Industrial Biotechnology, such as nanotechnology. This is the whole history of science. Rarely technologies compete as such. They are more adapted to some applications than others. They evolve. The petroleum-based petrochemical industry is populated by the Darwinian survivors of over 70 years of synthetic chemistry. They will not easily be displaced. Rather, biotechnology will allow the utilization of a whole new range of feedstocks. The future is coexistence, and increasingly, the customer will decide which technology to employ.
What does the future hold for the European Industrial Biotechnology sector?
I would say that Industrial Biotechnology has a lot to offer to Europe. Industrial biotechnology has the potential to form the basis of a future EU knowledge-based bioeconomy and make European society both more sustainable and more competitive. This is because Europe has many strengths: excellent biotechnology research base; the world’s largest chemical industry - infrastructure and knowledge base, solid development and production of bio-specialties. The recent enlargement of the EU also provides a potentially large increase in agricultural biomass available as raw material. We have strong political support for advanced concepts of sustainable production and we also need a supportive regulatory framework. We need to build on that strength and this effort is already on in progress. The European Commission has recently called for concerted action to quickly foster the emergence of six lead markets where Europe has the potential to become a world leader. The commission considers bio-based products as one of them, and it has committed to stimulate the development, production and uptake of bio-based products in Europe.
The inaugural European Forum for Industrial Biotechnology is coming up in September, what do you see as the objectives for this event?
The immense contribution of biotechnology to our industrial processes is already a reality; we want it to be known. We also want to promote the interaction among key industrial actors, society as a whole, scientists and universities to work, jointly, on new developments. We also want to promote dialogue with institutions, to boost the policy support. This industry is strongly committed to partner with all stakeholders. The aim of this Forum is to become the yearly reference venue in Europe for all interested parties.
Download the brochure here |
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OECD Roundtable on Supply-side Issues for Industrial Biotechnology
Monday 15 September 2008
14.00-17.00
with invited experts involving policy makers, practitioners and the academia.
For more information, contact Kiyokazu Nakase at the OECD
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Limited places for the workshops left!
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