WIREC USA and Finnish Biofuel collaboration

Minister Mauri Pekkarinen participated in the WIREC 2008 conference in Washington, March 2008. The blog post below was posted March 5, 2008. Pekkarinen spoke about R&D collaboration between USA and Finland. Finland is taking steps towards increased production of Biodiesel from non-food biomass. Neste Oil is a leading company in this field with projects in Finland, Singapore, and Central Europe.

Stora Enso and Neste Oil are building a pilot plant for cellulosic biodiesel production from forestry residuals and waste wood. Full scale operations will start in Finland in the time bracket of 2010 to 2015. UPM has a somewhat different approach. The newest sign for that is the pleriminary announcement about a bio-oil production from low value wood in Kajaani.

We'll learn more about the Kajaani project in the near future. Below is information from the Wirec conference.

Update from WIREC 2008 | reegle Blog: "WIREC 2008 is underway, and it’s off to a great start. United States Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte welcomed the participants and gave a call to action for the three conference days ahead. He was followed by United States Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer, who laid out the opportunities presented by renewable energy and the challenges ahead.

WIREC 2008 is enjoying exceptionally high attendance, with nearly 3000 participants registering for the ministerial conference. More than 100 official country delegations sent over 600 official party delegates, including more than 100 Ministers.

In conjunction with the ministerial-level plenary sessions and discussions, ACORE’s business conference also began today. The trade show opened this morning to over 5000 registered participants. CEOs and other high level executives from every renewable energy sector were in attendance, mingling with official government delegations from the ministerial conference.

The night will close with a reception sponsored by BP, bringing the first night of the conference to a successful end. Tomorrow the breakout sessions on each of the focal points begin, and conference participants are excited to have a chance to discuss the specific challenges they see ahead."