Engaging at the Biomass Biorefinery Network Conference

We were delighted to attend the Biomass Biorefinery Network (BBNet) Conference in Sheffield from 10 -12 April and have the opportunity to hear from a wide range of innovative research projects in the field as well as inspiring industry colleagues on topics covering clean growth, waste, biorefineries and the challenges of scale up. With over 100 delegates from across the UK, Europe and beyond, it was also a great opportunity to make new connections in the field and explore potential future collaborations

We supported a number of sessions, with our Director Patricia Thornley chairing a session on the circular economy and Rebecca Fothergill, our stakeholder engagement manager, shared the work on sustainable and inclusive bioenergy from rice straw in the Philippines on behalf of Mirjam Roeder, focusing on the socio-economic aspects and the importance of community engagement. You can read the related published paper here. Sarah Davidson of Croda, a Hub industry partner, also spoke about circular chemicals and the bioeconomy in the session and Anna Duden from Utrecht university presented on her work on Land Use Change and sustainable feedstocks.

Joanna Sparks, our Policy Fellow led an interactive session on the final day engaging colleagues to think about what makes a sustainable biorefinery and the policies that would be required to make it happen and Dan Taylor a PhD researcher from Aston University delivered a flash presentation on his latest research on the UK political bioeconomy. You can play our interactive biorefinery game on our ‘Explore Bioenergy‘ webpage.

PhD and Early Career Researchers Prince Okoro, Zeinab Zandieh and Dan Taylor from the Energy & Bioproducts Research Institute at Aston University also presented their research in the poster and networking session which was a fantastic opportunity to engage and share their research with the wider delegation.

You can find out more about the BBNet and how to become a member here.