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Bio360 Nantes – the Nordics are coming to France

With just under a week to go for the upcoming Bio360, a trio of parallel bioenergy conferences and expos in Nantes, France, Nordic technology and know-how providers are taking a prominent position."We are delighted to welcome the “Nordics, Country of the Year” to Nantes this year hosted on two Nordic Pavilions representing Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, says Paul Stuart, Director of the organizer BEES Bioenergy Events.

Paul Stuart, Director BEES Bioenergy Events and organizer of the upcoming Bio360, a trio of parallel bioenergy events (Bois Energie, Biogaz Europe, and ReGen Europe) to be held on January 29-30, 2020 in Nantes, France.

Thirty-three leading Nordic bioenergy names, representing the world-renowned and exemplary bioenergy know-how of the Nordic region will be in Nantes, both “ready and willing” to share their deep knowledge of bioenergy and to reach out to foster new partnerships for a brighter bioenergy future.

One pavilion dedicated to wood energy, is located in the Bois Energie hall and the other dedicated to biogas, is located within Biogaz Europe, said Paul Stuart, Director, of the organiser BEES Bioenergy Events.

According to Stuart, the Nordics are not only respected for their research and technical expertise but also for their political, societal, and business commitment to replacing fossil fuels from their energy mix with renewables, of which bioenergy makes up a significant portion and which is set to continue to grow.

For example, the transformation in Sweden from being majorly dependent on fossil fuels to today being furnished by almost 60 percent in renewables of which two-thirds is bioenergy is testimony enough to their current-day achievements.

But it doesn’t stop there, the country is working hard to be 100% fossil fuel free by 2050, said Paul Stuart who has travelled extensively throughout the Nordics

Stuart points out that bioenergy equally has so far played the most important role in Denmark’s green transition and it is expected that it will in the future continue to play a very important role in the Danish energy mix.

Sustainable energy amounts to approximately 29 perecnt of the primary energy production in Denmark and 33 percent of consumption. From this bioenergy has a major part with 61 percent of the production and 73 percent of the consumption, said Paul Stuart.

He added that Finland has declared that it will attain carbon neutrality by 2035.

Finland and Norway also have highly developed wood energy programmes for co-generation and district heating directed at fossil fuel replacement and are developing strongly across the biogas, liquid biofuels and bio-economy fields. Norway is home to the world’s largest factory for the production of liquefied biogas (LBG), Paul Stuart said.

Energy recovery, solid recovered fuels, and methanation

Wood energy and biogas aside, solid recovered fuels (SRF) represent a specific processing option for waste and are a new resource in the energy mix with a real industrial approach. Waste to energy, also commonplace in the Nordics, has developed to become a more and more followed model in other countries such as France. New perspectives for solid waste biomass fuels and energy recovery will also be discussed during the ReGen Europe event.

Renewable gas technologies are another topic to be discussed. In France, GRTgaz is committed, in accordance with the mandate given by the energy regulatory commission (CRE), to identify the economic conditions allowing the development of new renewable gas sectors including methanation, pyrogasification, hydrothermal gasification, and Power-to-gas (PtG) technologies.

GRTgaz initiates and supports numerous partnership approaches aimed at testing the technology while at the same time, GRTgaz is a stakeholder in the creation and management of this new sector to define its future regulatory framework on the technological and financial level (support mechanism).

With the aim of achieving the first industrial projects in France by 2024/2025, GRTgaz wishes to initiate by 2022 the setting up of a first pre-industrial demonstration project on a site with around 10 000 tonnes per year of liquid biomass waste or residue.

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