CluBE participated in the 1st BIOMASS REGIONAL FORUM 2024 "Bioenergy & Sustainable Forest Management" and was represented by Nikolaos Νtavos, Co-Founder and Manager of CluBE, along with several of CluBE's project managers.
Prior to the forum, a working meeting was held at the Ministry of Energy and Environment, featuring numerous government representatives, as well as biomass organisations and companies from Greece and Austria. The meeting was led by Ambassador, Mrs. Gerda Vogl and attended by Dr. Georgios Ntalos, Professor at the University of Thessaly and CluBE board member, an expert on forest biomass issues. During the meeting, the next steps and challenges in the Greek biomass sector were extensively discussed.
On the first day of the forum, Mr. Ntavos presented CluBE and two of its current European projects related to biomass, BIOTRANSFORM and MarginUp! that work towards creating sustainable and circular bio-based value chains in various sectors.
During the 2nd day of the forum, tThe Commercial Department of the Austrian Embassy in Athens in collaboration with the Hellenic Biomass Association (ELEAVIOM), and the Austrian Biomass Association (ABA), organised a mission for institutional actors and businesses in the Forestry and Bioenergy sector. Within the framework of the Energy Ministry’s recent reforms for the integrated management of the country's forest ecosystems, discussions focused on using innovative technologies to enable continuous and sustainable forest management.
The extensive discussions were followed by a brief visit to the Forestry Department of Mouzaki. During the visit, representatives of the Forestry Service gave several presentations as follows: 1) Mr. Nikolaos Damatis, General Secretary of ELEAVIOM, presented the biomass potential, green biomass points and hubs, challenges and proposed solutions for sustainable forestry management in Europe. 2) Austrian experts presented the forest biomass utilisation model in Austria, analysing their advanced forest management practices and how this expertise could be utilised in Greece and 3) Mr. Georgios Ntalos, Professor and President of the Department of Forestry, Wood Sciences and Design of the University of Thessaly, presented Forestry and Forest higher education in Greece and gave a tour of the Department's premises.
The 3rd and last day of the forum, CluBE along with the other participants, visited several biomass power plants. Participants toured Alfa Wood Group's 1MWe biomass-fired power plant, AgriGas' 500 kWe biomass gasification power plant as well as the company BIOPAR Energy SA, being the largest biomass energy production unit in Greece, with a capacity of 5MWe.
