Europe celebrates ‘Bioenergy Day’

The European Biomass Association (Aebiom) has unveiled a new ‘Bioenergy Day’ campaign to raise awareness on bioenergy’s "pivotal" role in the renewable energy transition.

More than 20 European countries are expected to benefit from the campaign thanks to the support of 30 national associations and a dozen international trade federations.

The ‘Bioenergy Day’ promotion makes use of original analogies to explain where the EU stands in the development of renewables, and in particular, bioenergy. Spreading the projection for Europe’s energy demand in 2017 across the calendar year makes it clear: Europe is still relying heavily on fossil fuels and nuclear for the first 299 days, Aebiom stated.

According to the trade body, bioenergy is Europe’s first source of energy, yet this is far from common knowledge.

The organisation has claimed that renewables are expected to provide Europe with 66 days’ worth of renewable energy in 2017, with as much as 41 days provided by bioenergy alone. Bioenergy has reached an all-tome high in Europe, according to the trade body.

The news comes as Aebiom starts its conference in Brussels today (21 November, 2017).

“By creating an occasion to celebrate the European Bioenergy Day, we want to recall everyone’s attention on an often-neglected leader of the renewable energy transition,” said Didzis Palejs, managing director of the Latvian Biomass Association (LATbio) and president of Aebiom.

He added:  “Bioenergy represents a great diversity of mobilised materials and technologies that deliver plenty of overlooked social and environmental benefits. There’s room to deliver more, and to do so in a sustainable way. We should all look forward to having the Bioenergy Day earlier every year, signaling a much-needed relief from fossil fuel consumption.”

According to Aebiom, the bioenergy sector should aspire to move the date to October by 2030, hitting a RES target of at least 35% with bioenergy continuing to play a central role.

Being currently produced from a great diversity of raw materials such as wood pellets and chips, straw, vegetable oil, manure, agro-industrial and organic waste, bioenergy has plenty of ways to reach that target – including unconventional materials and innovative technologies.

For this reason, the European Bioenergy Day website features 41 inspirational bioenergy stories, a quiz to test the public’s knowledge on the EU energy transition and creative comparisons – so that both experts and novices can have a fresh perspective on bioenergy.

This story was written by Liz Gyekye, editor of Bioenergy Insight.