Bioenergy: more crowded than ever before

Dear roommates!

There was a lot going on in Graz: the 7th Central European Biomass Conference was very busy, both in the audience and on stage. Climate and Energy Minister Leonore Gewessler also took the opportunity to explain her climate and energy strategy to the assembled audience - both at the lectern and in the subsequent panel discussion.

My three personal outcomes of the discussion:

• Sustainable: Energy from biomass can indeed be sustainable, as the President of the Austrian Biomass Association, Franz Titschenbacher, has repeatedly emphasized.
• Part of the solution: Bioenergy will make a valuable contribution to the energy transition - also to solving the "gas crisis", as Minister Gewessler put it.
• _{CO2 sink}: The future belongs to the use of biochar in agriculture and construction to store carbon - which breaks down carbon dioxide in the air - as BOKU Prof. Pröll explained in his keynote speech.

The panel for the discussion was broadly based: From the Managing Director of the Climate and Energy Fund Bernd Vogl, to the President of the Styrian Chamber of Agriculture Franz Titschenbacher, the MEP Simone Schmiedtbauer, the Secretary General of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Günter Liebel, the Minister Leonore Gewessler, the BOKU Prof. Tobias Pröll to the President of the Environmental Umbrella Organization Franz Maier.