Knowledge Based Bio-Economy towards 2020

Turning Challenges into Opportunities

The EU has placed innovation for a greener economy at the heart of its political agenda. The bio-economy is an important cornerstone in this process as highlighted in the EU 2020 Strategy, which underlines the role of the bio-economy as part of its “Innovation Union”. A decisive shift towards a bio-economy, where renewable biological resources and processes are used as input for industry is needed to tackle the global societal challenges, such as climate change and food crises, we are facing today.

Conference

The conference takes place on Tuesday 14 September and the aim of the conference is twofold: to take stock of the progress made since 2005 (the first KBBE conference) and the forward look towards 2020, contributing to the new vision and action plan for a Sustainable Bright Green Bio-Economy.

After the opening session of the conference, parallel sessions will be organised around three topics: feedstocks for the bio-economy, innovative biobased products and innovative food production. Policy makers, academics, industry and civil society representatives will jointly assess the present achievements and the future needs of the bio-economy. In the final part of the conference conclusions will be drawn and policy recommendations will be formulated.

Site visit

On Monday 13 September, participants have the opportunity to join a site visit to the Life Sciences and bio-energy clusters in Ghent, highlighting two different aspects of the bio-economy.

Register

Join experts, economists, business leaders, high-level policy makers and non-governmental representatives and grasp the opportunity to contribute to a new vision for one of the most important driving forces towards a prosperous European future.

This conference is part of the programme of the Belgian Presidency of the European Council. It is organised in close collaboration with the European commission, DG Research. For more information and registration please visit www.kbbe2010.be.

We look forward to seeing you in Brussels!