Bioökonomie-Start-up Puls
In Europe’s largest coal mining region, an estimated 15,000 jobs will be lost by 2030 as a result of the coal phase-out. A research team at TU Dortmund University has now conducted the first structured study on the role that bioeconomy startups play in the structural transformation of the Rhenish Mining Region.
The findings were recently published by the team led by Professor Steffen Strese and Professor Tessa Flatten in the first “Bioeconomy Startup Pulse.”
Bioeconomy describes a sustainable form of economic activity based on biological resources. It encompasses all industrial sectors that produce, process, or utilize biological resources. For the Rhenish mining region, the bioeconomy has been identified as an economic sector with potential.
The startups surveyed by the TU team for the “Bioökonomie-Start-up Puls” are, for example, developing innovative testing platforms for novel plant protection products, producing new functional carbohydrates from sugar beets, or cultivating local and sustainable seafood. According to the report, the growth of bioeconomy startups in the Rhineland mining region currently lags significantly behind the national cross-sector startup growth trend. One reason for this is that 51 percent of the surveyed startups rely on analog business models, whereas across Germany, less than ten percent of all startups rely on analog models and more than 65 percent on digital business models, which are significantly more scalable. The Bioökonomie-Start-up Puls is available in german only.