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12 October
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31 December 2005

ERA Bioenergy

ERA Bioenergy Strategy

Context

Launched by Commissioner Philippe Busquin, through the communication "Towards a European research area" (COM (2000)6, 18 January 2000) adopted by the Lisbon European council of March 2000, the ERA concept aims at improving the efficiency and innovation of research and technological development (RTD) activities within the European Union by a better integration of research works.
The European Research Areas are all the means gathered by the European Commission in order to improve the coordination of research activities and to converge them towards common skills, research policies and programmes. With ERA mechanisms, the European Union should build a common market for research and innovation as done for goods and services. Besides the thematic research themes, of which the sustainable development, the 6th Framework Programme also plans structuring and strengthening activities for ERA. Following this strategy, the European Commission supports the project "ERA bioenergy strategy - Short term measures to develop the European research area for bioenergy RTD ".

Objectives

This project first aims at making an inventory of the European research in bioenergy.
Secondly, it aims at identifying the possible political and scientific collaborations for a better collaboration and coherence between the research national efforts.Even though there are for a long time research projects involving several European countries, the ERA bioenergy strategy project wishes an international collaboration within the political leaders themselves and national / regional research programmes in bioenergy.

Description of tasks

- Assessment of the national and regional bioenergy RTD policies and rogrammes. Besides the EU members (including former accessing countries being part now of the EU), the survey have also included the IEA bioenergy research network.
- Categorisation and comparison of national policies and programmes of each countries
- Recommendations for short-term actions leading to the ERA for bioenergy RTD

Results obtained

- Assessment data indicates that all countries do everything and that there was no trace of coordination between programmes. Bioenergy is given high priority in most European countries and public effort are substantial but the quality of the data has limitations which makes it difficult to draw conclusions only based on the surveys.
- ERA actions should aim at supporting transfer of existing knowledge and developed technologies to minimise "double work" as well as at organising joint RTD initiatives on requiring further development.
- Existing FP6 (and other EU) instruments are suitable for these actions, in particular if NoE, IP and ERA-NET will be successful.
- Additional ERA Actions should be developed to initiate, coordinate and optimise non-EU funded RTD.

Contribution

None

Partners

Joanneum Research Forschungsgellschaft mbH – Austria, Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), Swedish National Energy Administration, Netherlands Agency for Energy and the Environment (NOVEM), Centre for Renewable Energy Sources (CRES) - Greece

CRAW off coordinator

Josef Spitzer
Joanneum Research
Elisabethstrasse 5
A-8010 Graz, Austria
Tél :+43-316-8761332
Fax :+43-316-8761320
Email : josef.spitzer@joanneum.at

Funding

  • CE - DG Research
  • CRA-W - Walloon Agricultural Research Centre