BIOMIMS Network

Mankind is faced with a major resource and climate challenge that it is reversing the world carbon flux. The XXth century industrial society has depleted buried stocks, remnants of eons of organic carbon synthesis, to transfer it into a now warming atmosphere, instead of harvesting energy from the sun and cycling carbon from the atmosphere using the low energy metabolisms required to sustain life. Biomimicry is a systematic cross-disciplinary approach emulating life processes and principles for applied innovations towards sustainability. The project proposes to link-up experts in some advanced sectors in biology, for applications in fields strategic to early reduction of carbon use: agro-ecology, “soft chemistry” and “green building” materials, and carbon sequestration. The project will identify commonalities, set directions and transfer their biomimicry lessons to institutions, the public, and industries having a high impact potential towards a solar-based carbon-fixing economy.

Themes

(1) Trans-discipline knowledge transfer

• Pulling together expertise, establish and publish a set of common yardsticks measuring fossil carbon dependence and intensity for each theme
• Tracking progress and comparing with other paths of innovation.
• Using scientific meetings, industrial exposure and the database to keep an updated overview of the common ground and identify cross-theme invariants
• Communicating broadly the corresponding outputs in appropriate trainings and curricula

(2) Agro-ecology

The use of the solar energy through photosynthesis and the restoration of natural soil fertility are the main
drivers of an agro-ecosystemic management. This makes agro-ecology a major contributor to the climate
change mitigation and a sustainable alternative to our present fossil energy-based agriculture (see the 2008
IAASTD report).
The WG will:

• Analyze current practices in three case studies: the integration of crop and livestock, agro-forestry,
• multi-scale approaches of bio-inspired systems.
• Consider the multifunctional aspect of agriculture, the restoration of the soil fertility while maximizing solar
• flux efficiency and minimizing fossil carbon dependence
• Gather experts about the interest of agroecology within the current EU agriculture policy

(3) Soft chemistry & green building materials

Low energy materials quality depends on their microstructure and on how they are produced.
The WG will address material production at room pressure and temperature, using biomass and/or atmospheric carbon:

• Re-use of wood & other vegetal (e.g. bamboo) or animal (e.g. mussels) products as light and resilient materials (textiles, cars, & buildings),
• Soft chemistry, biological “one pot reactions”, use of enzyme or enzyme-inspired catalysts and self-organizing materials,
• Bio-inspired production of glass or calcium carbonate building materials at room t° & pressure.

(4) Bio-based carbon sequestration

The WG will address various pathways:

• Microbial carbonatation, a recently launched research avenue (e.g. the CO2SolStock FP7 program)
• In cooperation with WG2, bacteria/fungi/plants symbioses to accelerate the precipitation of carbonates in soils in agro-forestry
• Use of micro-algae for fuel production as a C-neutral or C-positive industrial pathway
• In cooperation with the WG3, an increased use of wood or the development of bio-precipitated lime as building materials.