AUTHOR: Alba Alonso Adame, Wetlands International Europe
Last year, the projects PaluWise, Palus Demos, Paludi4All, FIBSUN and PaludiAllianz jointly replied to the open call for feedback from the European Commission regarding the Advanced Materials Act. Our claims were straightforward: including paludiculture in the Act would contribute to a faster economic growth in bio-based markets with more sustainable materials while contributing to EU climate goals.
About Advanced Materials Act
The Advanced Materials Act will offer solutions for improving the environmental performance of products and processes and facilitating circularity in the industry sector. In light of this, paludiculture biomass applications should be considered in the Advanced Materials Act to ensure cohesion with other climate objectives and to facilitate a large-scale market development.
Our first Policy Brief
Recently, in April 2026, PaluWise published its first policy brief on the Advanced Materials Act, following this previous joint activity with other collaborating projects. This policy brief introduces the Bioeconomy Strategy as one of the main contributors to bio-based markets maximising co-benefits in achieving climate targets. To be well aligned with this strategy, this PaluWise policy brief explains why the Advanced Materials Act should include paludiculture applications with illustrative examples from countries such as Germany, Finland, and the UK. Together with the potential of paludiculture applications, especially in the construction and insulation industries, challenges are pointed out. High initial costs, heterogeneous biomass streams, and issues related to regulations are constraining the development of a market for paludiculture. Therefore, policy instruments should focus on enabling favourable market conditions for paludiculture, with a research-based development approach.
Policy Brief highlights
In this document, we put emphasis on the importance of:
- Paludiculture – the productive land use of rewetted peatlands – has shown great potential in providing biomass for construction applications with enhanced properties, among others;
- The inclusion of innovative paludiculture products in the Advanced Materials Act could contribute to a transition to a circular and low-carbon economy minimising negative environmental impacts;
- Policies need to more strongly support paludiculture production, aligned with other relevant EU policy files;
- Connecting research and industry could trigger the scale up of paludiculture and expand the bio-based market.
Diversification of peatland-based economies enhances resilience, supports technological leadership
and contributes to EU strategic autonomy in advanced materials. Since testing new advanced
materials such as those from paludiculture has already gained attention in several European projects,
this policy action will help boosting the upscale of paludiculture.
Until the next milestone!