Bionova will help Norway achieve its climate goals

Bionova represents a reinforced effort to achieve the goals in agriculture’s climate plan and to increase resource efficiency and circularity in the bio-based industries’ value chains.

Agriculture currently accounts for around 9 per cent of Norway’s greenhouse gas emissions. The climate agreement between the agricultural industry and the state sets out a common course for climate measures that is designed to achieve cuts of 5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents by 2030.

Bionova represents an expansion of a project that Innovation Norway has administered for many years through funding agricultural projects within renewables and bioeconomic projects for the industry through the bioeconomy programme.

“Bionova will provide us with even more power so we can achieve Norway’s climate goals by 2030, and it objective of becoming a low emissions society by 2050,” says Silje Lesjø, Head of Agriculture and Acting Director of Bionova at Innovation Norway.

Value chains with huge potential

Norway has unique access to natural resources from agriculture, forestry, and aquaculture, and has built up value chains in relation to these industries. Bionova will be a tool for bio-based industries and available to players across the country.

“We want this work to continue to build on the Bioeconomy programme and focus on projects in the bio-based industries’ value chains. One example of a project in a value chain is using seaweed for feed concentrate with the resulting by-product sludge, which in turn becomes a biofuel. In other words, a value chain can be long and involve many types of companies,” says Lesjø.

Inge Hoemsnes from Hustadvika in Møre og Romsdal is one of the farmers who has received support from Innovation Norway in this field:

“We had to rethink energy sources, fertiliser, and feed on farms. The support from Innovation Norway has gone to building new barns, investing in a biogas plant, and other things. This has helped open the way for completely new opportunities to make cycles on farms even more circular than before,” he says.

Incorporating Bionova into Innovation Norway ensures that these customers will also gain access to the full range of services offered by Innovation Norway, and the ability to achieve synergies with other assignments and services will increase.

Broad expertise

Innovation Norway has already built up a strong professional community for bio-based industries, with knowledge of forestry and wood-based industries, aquaculture and fisheries, the bioeconomy and agriculture, and works closely with other companies and organisations in these sectors.

Bionova is being established as a separate unit in Innovation Norway and the central administration of the assignment will be based at Innovation Norway’s office in Innlandet County.

“Innlandet County is a region that is already making major investments within the bioeconomy, and thereby has substantial expertise and business clusters. We will exploit this to the fullest,” says Lesjø, who underscores that the project will entail the broad involvement of the whole of Innovation Norway to ensure that the three industries are taken care of in the best possible way.

“Our regional offices along the coast will play an important key role with its expertise in the blue sector,” says Lesjø.

Bionova started operations on 1 January 2023.