Bioenergy and Bio-economy: a long-term thinking!

Preparing a conference as important as EUBCE with uncertainty about the future is a strange situation. Will we have the joy of meeting in Marseille? Who will be able to attend? Who will want to attend? Will we have a 100% digital experience again? No one knows.

But if these uncertainties concern us all, if we think about it carefully, it is not the fundamental question. The pandemic questions us, not about urgency, but about the long term. It questions us, far beyond health issues. It questions our way of life in general.

– On environmental issues in the medium and long term,
– On energy issues, linked to our lifestyles and our societies
– By extension, on the issues of carbon cycle, bioenergy, bio-economy …

Will we be able to draw the consequences of such a situation? Will we use the time it gives us, to envisage a future with different resources and uses?

For more than a year now, we have had discussions in the scientific and organizing committees to affirm what is the essence of a major conference like EUBCE.

The situation has created many constraints, but also opportunities. It forced us to get out of our comfort zone and thus to think about the general role of carbon in our societies. What place for the fossil? What place for biomass? What place for re-circulating carbon? What synergies between different energy carriers?

Above all, this period has led us to look beyond energy issues to the environmental role of biomass and also its place in food, materials and chemistry.

The circular economy (of materials and energy), the bio-economy, the environment, good resources management, process efficiency and concrete technical and industrial solutions are pillars of the European Green Deal. This is the role of bio-resources, which we hope to see represented at this 29th EUBCE conference.

As elsewhere in Europe, the French government has adopted legislative and regulatory tools for the environment and energy such as the Multiannual Energy Program (Programmation Pluriannuelle Energie) and a National Low Carbon Strategy (Stratégie Nationale Bas Carbone), aiming at carbon neutrality. They are implemented thanks to the Alliances of Research on Energy (ANCRE) and on the Environment (Allenvi), thanks to the competitiveness clusters, thanks to ADEME and thanks to companies engaged in a fundamental change to propose technological solutions, to meet energy and environmental challenges.

“If opportunity knocks at the door, do not complain about the noise”. The COVID-19 gives us the opportunity of a second year of organization linked to France.

While we are not yet certain that we will be able to welcome you in Marseille, we are sure that beautiful projects are taking place in France and we wish to make you discover French initiatives and work force in bioenergy and bio-economy.

French teams, come, present your work, and meet the rest of the world of bioenergy and bio-economy! Teams from all over the world, come and discover French projects and the French teams!

On behalf of French research and industry, we welcome you with pleasure.