ROKWOOD IN A NUTSHELL: FINAL PUBLICATION, FINAL CONFERENCE AND MAIN OUTPUTS

ROKWOOD has been an ambitious three-year, six-country study which aimed to make the regionally based production of woody biomass economically attractive, technically feasible and environmentally sustainable.

Funded by the European Commission, ROKWOOD was focused on researching the development, implementation, monitoring and utilisation of woody crops grown in short rotation plantations (SRPs).

It has been developed a Final Publication, which gives you a very good overview about the project, the activities and outputs of the ROKWOOD project. You can find it HERE.

The project finished in November 2015 and very valuable outputs for the sector have been generated throughout the projects lifetime:

• A database on sector related projects and initiatives
• Policy briefs for each country dedicated to the project partnership
• A detailed Joint Action Plan
• The Best practice Booklet compiling 40 examples from different countries
• Information Videos explaining SRP to different stakeholders
• Valuable background information about the SRP sector: ROKWOOD publications

ROKWOOD Final Conference

In cooperation with the Association of Applied Biologists, Rothamsted Research, the Supergen Bioenergy Hub and the Logistec Project the Final Conference of ROKWOOD took place in Brussels on the 20 October 2015.

ROKWOOD project partners were presenting at this occasion the outputs of the projects to more than 50 conference attendees:

• Rokwood: Fuelling dialogue between biomass research, industry, policy and business. KEVIN LINDEGAARD (Crops for Energy Ltd, Bristol, UK)
• Short Rotation Plantations (SRP) Policy History in Europe: Lessons from the past and recommendations for the future. MARTIN HOLLEY (Centre for Sustainable Energy, Bristol, UK)
• Rokwood: Developing of direct chipping harvesters for SRP by the Swedish family enterprise Henriksson Salix AB. ANNIKA HENRIKSSON (SalixEnergi Europa AB, Svalöv, Sweden)
• SRC as raw material for medium scale district heating. HANS-GEORG VON ENGELBRECHEN (Agraligna GmbH, Beuchte, Germany)

After disscussion with the audience Mirko Hänel (ttz Bremerhaven) opened the Poster and Networking Session as Coordinator of the ROKWOOD project. This session was possibility to network with stakeholders of the sector. Some ROKWOOD partners were presenting their posters.

In parallel, ROKWOOD final meeting took place on 19 October 2015 in Brussels at EUBIAs office. Amongst other issues the project partners discussed with the European Project Officer of ROKWOOD Olivier Brunet how this very successful initiative can be continued in the future.