The Supergen Bioenergy Hub aims to use UK research knowledge and capability to create an enabling environment for sustainable bioenergy deployment. This is supported by our close engagement with key stakeholders, particularly through our four stakeholder forums:

• • Industry forum
  • Policy forum
  • Professional forum
  • Public engagement forum

The Industry Forum is for representatives from the industrial biomass, bioenergy and bio-based chemicals and materials community in the UK, including international organisations with a UK presence.

The purpose of the forum is to share technical information on the potential, performance and engineering challenges of UK biomass and bioenergy systems and activities with others (commercial and academic) active in the sector.

The forum will initially gather inputs from members about the most important priorities for the sector and how the forum could add insights and value to these. Events will focus on knowledge exchange between members.

Key priorities are:

• Interaction and engagement between industry and academia on key technical/engineering challenges;
• Effective transfer of knowledge from emerging Supergen Bioenergy Hub research to industrial stakeholders;
• Improved academic understanding of key challenges in the industrial sector.

Events may include seminars, workshops, site visits and training sessions. Once a year, the forum will convene at the Hub’s Annual Assembly to hear about industry problems and challenges and allow researchers to share their newly created knowledge. A second meeting each year will be a sandpit focused on annual funding challenge call. Industry and academia will work together to co-create new projects for Hub funding.

Membership of the Policy Forum is restricted to national and regional government representatives from the UK who work in areas related to biomass and bioenergy.

Key aims are to:

• Enable engagement and knowledge transfer between policymakers/government and members of the UK academic community on key topics;
• Provide local, national and international policymakers with access to UK academic expertise and scientific evidence to inform policy and decision making;
• Develop greater understanding of policymaker needs and objectives in the academic community;
• Bring together stakeholders from different government organisations with interests in a similar topic.

Policy Forum events take place twice year and may include seminars, workshops and training sessions.

The Professional Forum aims to connect professionals across the UK who have a legitimate interest in biomass and bioenergy issues, but for whom this is not a core technical focus area, including but not limited to consultants, planning professionals, legal professionals, journalists, local authority staff and appointed officials with academic expertise relevant to their objectives.

It is open to both professionals and academics to register their interest areas in our member database so that organisations can find people with the right skills to meet their information needs.

Additionally, we will provide professional training (some of which may be on a charged basis), which may include:

• Training by industrial partners for academics on business relevant skills such as financial and business model development; and
• Training by academic partners on lifecycle assessment, spatial mapping, process engineering and qualitative interviews and analysis.

The Public Engagement Forum brings together all those interested in promoting a discourse around current and future use of biomass and bioenergy, and facilitates engagement activities targeted at key groups.

The primary aim of the Public Engagement Forum is to build on the reputation of the Supergen Bioenergy Hub as a trusted, independent and authoritative voice on issues relating to biomass and bioenergy. We will:

• Seek to understand and engage with the controversies surrounding biomass and bioenergy in the public domain;
• Disseminate Hub evidence and knowledge in an accessible and engaging way;
• Identify new and emerging issues within the public discourse to inform co-creation of research in the Hub;
• Develop knowledge and tools relating to best practice in science communication within an area increasingly dominated by mis- and dis-information.