Scaling the bioeconomy means new value chains and businesses demanding particular skill sets.
While newer segments of the bioeconomy may revolve around lab-based innovations, scientists will not be the only ones in demand. A surprising number of vocational and service roles proliferate once biobased capacity scales.
We look at the whole spectrum of skills that it takes to bring renewable materials to market.
Upstream: supplying sustainable raw materials
The expansion of the bioeconomy will depend on the expansion of industrially useful biomass and while there is some movement away from using less sustainable cultivated crops and towards waste feedstocks, it is likely we will still see further growth in raw material volumes coming from agriculture and forestry.
The carbon intensity and pollution impacts of a biobased product depend to a large extent on how the feedstock was grown. Forestry and farming methods will be a major factor in keeping the environmental impacts of biomaterials to a minimum.
Under a high sustainability scenario, the bioeconomy will demand farmers use methods that have lighter impacts. This can permeate every stage of the farming process – from crop selection and diversification to overall farm management and organisation. Soil management skills will be important in this as would restoring degraded land. Ecological land management is a highly skilled endeavour and retraining will feature heavily in any transition towards a sustainable farming system.
Shifting away from capital-intensive to more sustainable methods is expensive for farmers, who may need both financial support and training to adopt sustainable methods of agriculture that limit the environmental impacts of the products they are selling. This will also require support from the policy level with incentives for consumers to buy sustainably sourced goods and a well-structured subsidy system, especially one that buffers against low prices that are all too common for agricultural commodities.
Professional skills needed in the upstream of the biobased supply chain are usually honed on the job. However, vocational courses can also provide foundations. Around Europe, there are models of this kind of hands-on training specifically geared towards the sustainable bioeconomy. In the Basque region for example are a network of vocational schools that promote bioeconomy skills with a focus on sustainable food, smart building, sustainable construction and sustainable bioscience.
Estimates for bioeconomy job creation tend to be highest under modelling scenarios that assume high levels of industry sustainability. Keeping a growing bioeconomy sustainable will require a raft of ecological service staff involved in the monitoring of harvests and cropland, land restoration, soil stabilisation, and recreation.
Rural bioclusters
A scaled bioeconomy would likely create a jump in rural jobs which are not necessarily confined to land management or cultivation. Processing capacity will build out around forestry and agriculture, for example, turning the waste from these industries into higher-value products.
This bunching together of the biobased value chain around raw materials pools is known as a ‘bio-cluster’, where industrial processing plants that are related to one another are located near each other, cutting transportation costs. In a circular bio-cluster, the ‘waste’ raw materials of one plant may get turned into high-value products in another. There could be many bio-clusters throughout a country and region tied to agricultural centres of production.
The clustering of several steps in the biobased value chain may encourage some farmers to set up their own capacity in processing. Here, new skills of primary and secondary conversion and green chemistry and engineering will be in demand. Knowledge of how best to valorise farm waste streams for high value products and an understanding of green chemicals markets will also become valuable.
Crosslinking business and science
A key part of the bioeconomy will be commercialising new processes and materials. Transitioning products out of the lab and onto the market will require scientists who are conversant in economics as well as their discipline.
In some countries, master’s degrees have been developed to acquaint scientists with the economics of biobased value chains: the 2 year Master “Bioeconomy” offered by the University of Hohenheim in Germany since 2014, through the Master in Bioeconomy and the Circular Economy held in Italy since 2017.
Degrees that focus on the bioeconomy tend to be generalist rather than specialist, covering a broad range of skills from technical content to the social, political, and economic challenges of building a bioeconomy.
The later stages of product development demand awareness of business basics such as marketing sales, management, finance, and accounting. Founders operating biobased startups on a shoestring will need some familiarity with these skills in order to get their products to market.
Marketing is a particularly important component of bringing new biobased technologies to market, playing not just a promotional role in raising brand awareness but also an educational one, convincing consumers unfamiliar with a product on both its sustainability and performance.
The roles of a biorefinery
Biorefineries are what make a bioeconomy. They are the plants that turn basic biomass into differentiated green chemicals, which are then sent for further processing into end products.
Some biorefineries produce chemicals, materials, and food ingredients using microorganisms that can digest crops, wood waste or macroalgae – into useful products.
This is industrial-scale fermentation, a form of biotechnological ‘factory’ that uses gene-modified organisms to produce high-value goods. Scaling this sector would demand a highly educated workforce trained in microbiology and biochemistry.
In most biorefineries, more traditional forms of processing dominate. Here, biomass sourced from agriculture and forestry will be transformed using machines, heat, and isolated chemicals rather than living, bio-engineered microorganisms. Industrial engineering skills will be in demand at more traditional thermochemical biorefineries.
The bioenergy value chain is one of the most mature parts of the bioeconomy and gives a good model of the diversity of professions involved in creating a single biorefinery product.
Upstream of the biorefinery, forestry technicians guide the cultivation and harvesting of biomass while biologists design and scale the biomass conversion processes. In the biorefinery, mechanical engineers finetune the machines used in thermochemical processing.
Aside from the scientific professions, there is a whole range of service workers overseeing operations and outreach, from business analysts who fine-tune company strategy to policy analysts who lobby on behalf of the industry.
Whatever the specific type of biorefinery, operation will involve identifying methods of waste reduction so the plant can operate at maximum efficiency.
Services
Every segment of the bioeconomy will also need supporting logistical services that allow it to function and get biomass and biobased products to its markets. Machinery, energy, and transport will be paramount as expanded bioeconomy sectors may mean new basic infrastructure, such as roads. There may also be a demand for educators to train or retrain workers for new roles demanded by biobased value chains.
An expanded bioeconomy will raise demand for technical service roles. Regulatory consultants will be in demand to help align businesses with environmental and sustainability compliance laws. Business and policymakers will demand life-cycle analysis practitioners, who specialise in quantifying the environmental impacts of a product from extraction to end-of-life, accounting for ecologically relevant interactions between different supply chains and industries.
A circular bioeconomy goes one step further than a bioeconomy, where goods are made from renewable materials: it is an economy where all waste byproducts and products at the end of their life can be taken apart and get used as raw material inputs for higher-value goods.
Growth in a circular bioeconomy will demand workers that have a general knowledge of sustainable procurement and agronomy. Setting up more circular supply chains will also require workers who can design new products or systems along sustainable principles. These engineering and design roles will generate new business and consumption models, such as leasing or sharing models that could support a more circular economy, or adapting old products to become more sustainable. Data analysis and management will be key to this.
A just transition
Bioeconomy growth can offer meaningful, well-paid jobs in more sustainable industries. Yet as with all economic shifts, there will be other sectors that lose out. In order to achieve a just transition, the worker impacts of social dislocation need to be softened.
It is often the case that biorefineries get rid of the need for low-skilled workers in the economy overall. For example, researchers studying the impact of biorefineries on the local labour force have found that they can reduce the number of jobs in the agricultural sector.
The mechanism at work here may be that when biorefineries draw workers away from farms, the farms replace these jobs permanently with labour-saving technologies. The net result may be an overall reduction in the number of jobs in the economy.
Extensive training programmes may ward against this. A good model for this is the Swedish Job Security Councils (JSCs) that help workers after they get their redundancy notice. Their activities include counselling, coaching, and skills development activities provided through personal advisors assigned to individual workers. Led by unions, they have no state involvement and so are not affected by shifts in policy or public finances.
Designing retraining programmes requires anticipating what skills a changing economy will require. In France, the economic monitoring body the National Observatory for Green Economy Jobs and Skills carries out this function, providing research and data that helps guide labour market policy.