News from the Board May 2009

The World Bioenergy Association’s interim board of directors convened its second meeting near the end of March 2009 to review progress made in launching WBA during the last year, and more importantly to chart the way ahead for the remainder of 2009 and into 2010.

In the past year, WBA has completed the administrative requirements allowing it to become a leading voice for bioenergy on the global stage.

A new WBA website has been launched, providing people involved in the bioenergy field – as well as members of the general public – an important portal for news and information about bioenergy-related developments.

In December 2008, WBA also partnered with the International Renewable Energy Alliance (IREA) to showcase developments and discuss the financing for renewable at an official side-event of the COP 14 meeting in Poznan, Poland.

Looking Ahead

The March meeting was more important, however, for the progress made in giving shape to WBA’s ambitious action plan for the year ahead.

With COP 15 meetings in Copenhagen fast approaching, the WBA is working hard to ensure the voice of bioenergy is heard at the table when world leaders convene to chart a post-Kyoto future.

The WBA interim board decided to create five working groups to begin work on drafting WBA Position Papers on a variety of important bioenergy-related themes.

One working group will focus exclusively on developing a set of bioenergy certification criteria by drawing on existing examples to create WBA’s own system for bioenergy certification.

A second working group will tackle the theme of sustainability in terms of how bioenergy can contribute to solving some of the many challenges related to climate change.

In the autumn of 2009, another working group will begin examining issues related to bioenergy standardisation with the expectation of being able to present the results at a large international event in 2010. Standardisation will deal with the technology making energy from fuels and the interface between fuel and machinery. Certification criteria mostly deal with the fuel.

Another WBA working group will look at developing suggestions for public subsidies and other incentive programmes that help stimulate bioenergy utilisation.

A final working group will devote itself to analyzing the bioenergy land-use debate as it pertains to food and water supplies with the goal of presenting a WBA Position Paper on the issue sometime in 2010.

Additional initiatives

While the bulk of WBA activity in the coming year will revolve around the working groups, each set to consist of around 10 experts and professionals, several other initiatives are underway to strengthen the organisation and its role for promoting a sustainable future for bioenergy around the world.

While the website recently underwent a substantial upgrade, more improvements set for implementation in the coming months include a business platform and a research platform which would allow WBA members from both communities to engage with one another at a distance, whether to buy and sell their products and services or to share insights into best practices and recent research findings.

WBA also plans to create a “how-to” guide for creating a national bioenergy association to help organise bioenergy professionals in more countries to work together, share their knowledge, and speak with a more unified voice at both the national and global level.

Additional communication initiatives include calling on members to serve as “on-call correspondents” for WBA to ensure that the website features that latest, newsworthy developments from different regions around the world, as well as in-depth profiles of interesting to bioenergy professionals in different countries and sectors.

And as always, the WBA interim board and WBA members have been tasked with spreading the word about WBA in the drive to expand the organisation’s membership. Recruitment materials have been made available on the website in order to facilitate more companies and national bioenergy organizations to join WBA and help be a part of its efforts to strengthen bioenergy’s voice across the globe.