Ireland’s first National Bioeconomy Strategy launched
(Left to right) Minister for agriculture, food and the marine Martin Heydon, Taoiseach Micheál Martin and minister for climate, energy and the environment Darragh O’Brien at the launch of BioScale 2030: Ireland’s National Bioeconomy Strategy 2026-2030.
Ireland’s first National Bioeconomy Strategy, ‘BioScale 2030,’ was launched at the Global Bioeconomy Summit hosted in Dublin.
The launch of the strategy marks a significant milestone in Ireland’s ambition to develop a sustainable, competitive and innovative bioeconomy that creates new economic opportunities while supporting climate action and circular economies.
The bioeconomy focuses on all sectors that produce, process, distribute or consume biological resources. It aims to make better use of output from agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors and secondary resources from processing industries, including food waste.
Development within the sector offers opportunities to develop higher added value, new income for farmers, foresters and fishermen, and new, sustainable, innovative products that use biological inputs over fossil fuels as a base input, such as new foods, feeds, biobased fertilisers, construction materials and consumer goods.
The summit was created by the International Advisory Council of Global Bioeconomy (IACGB), with each edition co-designed by the council and the host country.
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This year Ireland hosts the summit at the Convention Centre in Dublin, on October 20 and 21, bringing together senior policymakers, international organisations, researchers, industry leaders, investors and civil society representatives from across the world.
The summit takes place during the annual Bioeconomy Ireland Week, with further events and site visits taking place across the island from October 19 to 23.
Speaking ahead of day two of the summit, the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, said: “Ireland is delighted to welcome more than 1,500 delegates from across the world to Dublin for the Global Bioeconomy Summit.
"This is an important opportunity for us to demonstrate the contribution that our research, innovation, enterprise and renewable biological resources can make to the development of a more sustainable economy.”
The Taoiseach continued, saying that with Ireland’s strong agricultural, forestry and marine sectors, the bioeconomy has significant opportunities and could “provide a solid foundation for future growth that is circular and climate neutral.”
He said: “The strategy will help ensure that these opportunities are developed in ways that support climate action and for the benefit of communities across the country.”
The theme for this year’s summit is “Bioeconomy for Socio-economic Transformation and Climate Action” and will examine how a sustainable bioeconomy can create new economic opportunities, help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce reliance on expensive fossil fuels.
A central focus of the event was accelerating the transition from research and innovation to commercial deployment through supportive policies, investment, partnerships and market development.
Minister for agriculture, Martin Heydon, said: “The bioeconomy offers an exciting opportunity to create new value from Ireland’s renewable biological resources… Our challenge now is to connect these strengths, scale successful innovations and develop new markets and value chains in which farmers, foresters, fishers and other primary producers can participate and capture greater value.”
Minister for climate, energy and the environment, Darragh O’Brien, said: “The sustainable use of our biological resources is imperative if we are to move from an overreliance on fossil fuels, without creating a new challenge for our future generations to solve.
"We must reimagine how we view our natural resources, including what we may currently discard or view as waste. The indigenous industry that we can build around these principles can create jobs, boost our competitiveness, and address our climate and energy challenges.”
Minister of state with responsibility for food promotion, new markets, research and development Noel Grealish said: “We have made significant investment in developing Ireland’s bioeconomy and marked some major milestones recently, including opening Ireland’s first on-farm integrated grass-biorefinery and anaerobic-digestion demonstration plant in Cork and the opening of a National Biorefinery Pilot Plant and Bioeconomy Demonstration Initiative Tipperary.”
The summit will also see the European Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy, Jessika Roswall, launch the Biobased Europe Alliance, an initiative aimed at addressing barriers to the commercial scale-up of biobased materials, products and technologies across Europe.
