E-EUBCE 2020 Available Now

Despite the travel restrictions and the pandemic, the 28th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition continued in a virtual format. Over four days more than 1,550 experts from research, industry and institutions spread across 87 countries, contributed to the success of the first-ever fully virtual biomass conference and exhibition, providing more than 540 presentations and moderating a total of 65 webinar sessions.

On Monday July 6, the virtual opening session totalled over 1,530 attendees, while 1,784 visited the e-exhibition. Considering that economic recovery and climate policy are both top priorities for European policymakers, this year’s EUBCE was dedicated to it.

Claudes Turmes, Minister for Energy of Luxembourg, recorded his video for the conference from a forest, underlining how important the bioeconomy is for European citizens. He places bioeconomy as a cornerstone for making Europe more resilient and points how the climate urgency requires us to not loose time. Watch here: https://youtu.be/AcbXLJP12dM.

Maria Gracia Carvalho, former Minister of Energy of Portugal and currently Member of the European Parliament, welcomed the conference as a wonderful contribution for creating the vision for a real Green Deal, by integrating the first time the aspects of bioeconomy in the conference. Watch here: https://youtu.be/n7x3LnXjbbA

During the closing session, Nicolae Scarlat, Conference Technical Programme Chair, resumed the key take home messages from the conference: the European Green Deal and the Recovery Plan represent a great opportunity to recognize a key role to sustainable bioenergy as an essential contributor to achieving the climate target. Ensuring the sustainability of biomass supply and a stable long-term policy framework are necessary to boost investments for the deployment of bioenergy.

“We missed the feeling of the physical conference just as much as you all missed your colleagues and friends, such as the applauses after each speech, the chatting during coffee breaks, the hugs and handshakes,” remarks Heinz Ossenbrink, EUBCE ExCo Member and facilitator of the e-EUBCE, “nevertheless we succeeded in giving as much human touch as possible and never left anyone alone behind their screens.”

Next year the EUBCE will hopefully go back to its traditional physical format, in Marseille, France, April 26-29, 2021. The e-EUBCE interactive platform and all its multimedia content will be available for viewing until September 2020.