ART Fuels participation in 8th IRENA Assembly

The ART Fuels Forum participated in the 8th IRENA Assembly which took place in Abu Dhabi on 12 January 2018. The event gathered key international organizations that promote the sustainable use of bioenergy, let them present their activities and open the floor for discussion on opportunities for future collaborations. Particular interest was expressed in collaboration on public outreach to explain sustainable bioenergy potential, on understanding technologies for advanced liquid biofuels, and on effective bioenergy scale-up policies.

Participating organizations included, in addition to IRENA (DDG Sakari Oksanen and Senior Programme Officer Jeff Skeer) and the Alternative Renewable Transport Fuels Forum (Theodor Goumas, Project Manager), GBEP – Global Bioenergy Partnership (Michela Morese, Executive Secretary), IEA Bioenergy Technology Collaboration Programme (Kees Kwant, Executive Committee Chair – by amplified cellphone link), ICRAF – World Agroforestry Center (Programme Officer Craig Jamieson), Biofuture Platform (Luiz Barroso, President, Brazil Energy Planning Agency), World Bioenergy Association (Remigijus Lapinskas, President), SE4All – Sustainable Development for All (Gerry Ostheimer, Bioenergy Accelerator Lead) and below50 (also Gerry Ostheimer).

In the course of the meeting, discussions on the enhancement of the collaboration between the ART Fuels Forum, IRENA and other relevant initiatives in the field of Advanced Biofuels were conducted and was agreed that the forthcoming, jointly organized conference in Brussels (10 & 11 April 2018) under the title “The role of low carbon fuels in decarbonising transport: the emerging consensus from international initiatives” will be an appropriate starting point (more information on the conference will be announced soon).

More information on the 8th IRENA Assembly meeting can be found here: http://www.irena.org/events/2018/Jan/Bioenergy-for-Sustainable-Development-IRENA8A