1 February 2010 – How can we move forward after COP15 in Copenhagen? And how will the global bioenergy community be affected? What are the opportunities and potential for modern bioenergy? These were the questions at the “Afternoon Tea-view of World Bioenergy 2010” held at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. More than 60 diplomats from 35 embassies were there to learn more about Swedish and global bioenergy.
Tomas Kåberger, Director General of the Swedish Energy Agency, and conference chairman of World Bioenergy 2010 in Jönköping, remarked that Sweden has unique possibilities to show modern bioenergy technologies at work in numerous locations. To take the visitors “from know-how to show-how” is the key concept of World Bioenergy, by arranging study tours and excursions to a hundred bioenergy sites all over southern Sweden.
Referring to the up-coming football World Cup in South Africa, ambassador Matthew Barzun from the U.S. Embassy gave his view of the Obama administration’s commitment to a global climate policy. “In the global climate debate, for many years we’ve been sitting on the bench, but now we’re part of the game. Our ambition is to take a leading role.”
Both ambassador Barzun, Minister councellor Bent Craff from the Danish embassy, and Fredrik Hannerz of the Swedish Ministry of the Environment talked about what had been achieved in Copenhagen, the Copenhagen Accord, and how this commitment will be followed up in the coming year leading up to the next big climate conference in Mexico in December of this year.
The global bioenergy industry has much to offer to meet the climate challenge, and the potential for bioenergy is not generally known by politicians, the media and the business community. To remedy this lack of information, the World Bioenergy Association (WBA) has produced a report on the “Global potential of sustainable biomass for energy.”
Svetlana Ladanai of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences gave a short summary of the report. The report concludes that there is a potential to meet the total global energy demand with biomass. The initiative to form a global bioenergy organisation was taken at World Bioenergy 2008. WBA’s president Kent Nyström gave a brief introduction about WBA to the participants at the Tea-view.
Gustav Melin of Svebio and Jakob Hirsmark of Elmia, invited everyone to participate in World Bioenergy 2010 in Jönköping, and asked the diplomats to spread the message about Swedish bioenergy and about World Bioenergy 2010 to their home countries, companies, research institutions and policy makers.
LINKS
The report “Global potential of sustainable biomass for energy” and more information about the World Bioenergy Association can be found at the WBA webpage www.worldbioenergy.org.
More information about the World Bioenergy 2010 event on www.worldbioenergy.com.
