The Moderator and Presenter of the Event is BBC presenter Stephen Sackur
Plenary session: The socio-economic and environmental benefits of the EU bio-based sector
- Pavel Misiga; Head of Circular Economy & Biobased systems Unit DG Research and Innovation, European Commission
- Dirk Pilat, Deputy Director, Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation OECD
- Christine Lang, Chair Bioeconomy Council
- Elsi Katainen, MEP, Vice Chair of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural and Development
Plenary session: Bio-based Europe: vision and strategic objectives
- Jaana Husu-Kallio, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Finland
Jaana Husu-Kallio gave a great presentation. She was able to convince me in 45 seconds that Finland is a Bioeconomy champion.
- Daniel Badman , Head of Public Affairs and Sustainability Communications, Stora Enso
- Dirk Carrez, Executive Director , Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC)
Dirk Carrez gave an excellent presentation. He was able to share a simple but important message: The US bioeconomy is based on Corn. The Brazilian bioeconomy is based on sugar cane. The European bioeconomy is based on a wider area of biomass; its based on biodiversity.
Plenary session – Stable, supportive and coherent policies: the road to the bio-based products uptake
- Giovanni Teodorani Fabbri , General Manager, FaterSMART
We can grow faster outside Europe. Europe is sometimes too complicated. Outside Europe we can accelerate.
- Raul Kirjanen, CEO, AS Graanul Invest / OÜ Graanul Biotech
Great speech from Raul Kirjanen. We need pan-European rules on biomass sustainability. Limit state aid, rather tax polluters instead of subsidising new technologies.
Some NGOs discredit bioeconomic initiatives because they’re linked to other (Fossil) industries. A new bio-economic inititaive will always step on someone toes.
- Maria Da Graça Carvalho, Member of the European Parliament (MEP), European Parliament
Booths
