27|08|2010

The European Commission finances ten new bio-energy LIFE+ projects

Four Spanish projects plus six more spread between France, Italy, Poland, Greece, Holland and Sweden comprise the package of initiatives linked to bio-energy to be financed as part of the LIFE+ program approved by the European Commission. The EU will contribute three million euros to Spanish projects.
The European Commission has approved 250 million euros worth of financing for 210 new projects in the third edition of the LIFE+ program (2007-2013), the European environment fund.

Projects come from all over the European Union and include activities in areas concerning nature conservation, information and communication, and environmental policy. The main objective of ten of the projects is related to the exploitation of energy from organic waste and other types of bio-fuels.

Four of these ten projects are Spanish and cover a range of bio-energy areas (bio-gas, biomass and bio-fuels). The total investment in the four projects is worth more than eight million euros, three million of which will be provided by the EU. The largest by far in budget terms is Citrofuel, with a scheduled investment of 5.6 million euros (1.7 million from LIFE+).

Citrofuel is being promoted by Citrotecno, a company from Valencia working on the treatment of waste from the food and agriculture industry. One of the objectives of this initiative is the construction of an industrial prototype of a plant for producing bio-ethanol from waste from the industrial production of citric fruits employing a new fermentation process.

Exploitation of forest, vegetable oil and livestock wastes
The Town Hall of Enguera, also from Valencia, is promoting Bioenergy & Fire Prev, a project including the testing and evaluation of the potential of biomass from forestry work as a source of renewable energy, rural employment and aid in the fight against forest fires.

In Valladolid, the Valuvoil project of the Cartif Foundation has been approved. It consists in the development of an environmentally and economically viable method for improving the anaerobic decomposition of waste and sub-products generated during the treatment of vegetable oils for the production of bio-gas, among other uses.

The last of the Spanish “bio-energy” LIFE+ projects approved is Ecorega, presented by the Galician agricultural union, Agrarias-UPA. The objective of Ecorega is to seek out good practices in the management of organic agricultural and livestock waste from Galicia and other regions of Spain. Activities will focus on the use of agricultural waste for the purposes of composting and bio-gas production.