Lucy is a Senior Consultant at NNFCC. She has been working in the bioeconomy for 13 years, of which the last 5 have been at NNFCC. Lucy has a broad knowledge of the bioeconomy and her expertise is in industrial biotechnology (IB), anaerobic digestion (AD) and sustainability.

Lucy supports UK AD plants with regulatory compliance and maintains NNFCC’s UK biogas and biomethane greenhouse gas calculator, keeping up to date with regulatory developments including RED II. She also provides advice to potential investors and policy makers on biomethane markets, feedstocks, supply chains, digestate management and sustainability. As a fluent German speaker, Lucy also has a good knowledge of AD and biogas policy and technology in Germany and other German-speaking countries.

Lucy’s knowledge of carbon accounting goes beyond AD and she carries out life cycle analysis (LCA) for various biobased products, particularly those derived from IB. She is proficient in SimaPro LCA software and familiar with ecoinvent and other relevant lifecycle inventory databases.

Lucy has also carried out a range of market research projects on biotech-derived products such as muconic acid, itaconic acid and L-cysteine, as well as biomass-extracted polymers such as gelatine and latex.

Lucy has a special-interest area in innovative food and food ingredients, particularly when derived from biotech. This includes a focus on processing technologies used for making food and food ingredients, feedstocks and sustainability for innovative foods, and market issues around regulation and voluntary labelling schemes.

Prior to working at NNFCC, Lucy spent 6 years working in research in Austria, at the Austrian Centre for Industrial Biotechnology (acib GmbH) and BOKU University. Her research topics included C1 gas fermentation, enzymatic degradation of lignocellulose, anaerobic digestion, and the flow behaviour of fibre-rich slurries. Lucy has a bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology from the University of Edinburgh and a master’s degree in Biochemical Engineering from University College London (UCL).

Recent projects

• Evaluation of the potential supply of biomethane for transport uses in Scotland.

• Market review of AD feedstocks and digestate in Europe (for a gas-infrastructure company).

• Lifecycle analysis (LCA) of a novel [fermentation-derived] single-cell protein made using CO2 as a carbon source (for a technology developer).

• RHI application support – helped AD plants apply for RHI tariffs prior to its closure in 2021, carried out due diligence for scheme.

• AD GHG reporting – regular reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from biogas feedstocks to ensure compliance with RHI / FIT.
  
  
• Marketing restrictions on GMM-derived food ingredients – determined food safety and food labelling issues for food ingredients made from GM microorganisms (for a technology developer).

WASTE2FUNC

Lucy co-ordinates NNFCC’s involvement in the WASTE2FUNC project, a BBI-JU Demo project focussed on using IB to convert waste into biosurfactants and lactic acid as functional ingredients. In this project, NNFCC is evaluating feedstock availability, researching market segments for biosurfactants and lactic acid, and investigating barriers to market uptake of waste-derived ingredients, co-ordinating specific focus groups on these topics. NNFCC will develop full business cases in support of deploying large-scale flagship plants for these products.