Tamar Regional Council (Israel): an arid-region demonstration site for standardising and valorising date palm residues

About
Tamar Regional Council, in Israel’s Dead Sea region, faces a persistent bio-waste challenge: tens of thousands of tonnes of date palm pruning residues. Irregular, bulky residues cannot be fed directly into conversion equipment. A gasification unit and a pre-treatment line that turns the residues into uniform pellets have therefore already been built in the Tamar region, so the standardised feedstock step is in place. We want to build on this with European partners to create a replicable, business-model-driven biomass flow, with Tamar as local-authority partner and demonstration site. The topic is an Innovation Action (TRL 6-8) with a deadline of 22 September 2027.**

What Tamar brings**

• Host a TRL 6-8 demonstration site: pre-treatment and pelletising line, gasification unit with a generator, and biochar as a co-product.

• Supply a real, large-volume feedstock stream, with sewage sludge from the local wastewater treatment plant as a possible co-feedstock case.

• Act as the local-authority partner: co-develop business cases, regional biomass planning and social acceptance with farmers, communities and the hotel sector.

• Provide a regional biomass platform linking residue producers with users, to count toward the topic’s network of at least five platforms.

• Share first-hand regulatory experience (permitting of waste-treatment facilities, biochar use, sludge co-processing) to inform barriers and end-of-waste recommendations.

• Offer an arid, Mediterranean-climate use case that can be replicated in other palm and orchard residue regions.

Who we are looking for

• A coordinator or lead partner experienced in Horizon Europe Innovation Actions (Cluster 6 / CBE JU) to lead or co-build the consortium.

• Regional and local authorities, bioeconomy agencies and clusters, especially from Central and Eastern Europe, Ukraine and EU candidate countries, to run or strengthen biomass platforms and twin with Tamar.

• Developers of digital biomass marketplaces, traceability and logistics tools for bio-waste streams.

• Technology providers and RTOs in pre-treatment, densification and standardisation, thermochemical conversion and biochar, plus labs for feedstock quality testing.

• Experts in life-cycle, techno-economic and social impact assessment of biomass flows.

• Policy and regulatory experts on end-of-waste criteria, the Waste Framework and Landfill Directives, and permitting.

• Primary producer organisations, agri-food companies, biochar end-users and social acceptance specialists.