VITO (the Flemish institute for technological research) is a leading independent European research and consulting centre, located in Flanders, Belgium, developing sustainable technologies in the area of energy, environment, materials and remote sensing. VITO provides objective research, studies and advice enabling international, national and regional authorities to establish future policies. VITO¡¯s research finds its application in sustainable process and production technologies or cleantech, environment, energy efficiency, renewable energy, smart grids, advanced material and analysis techniques, secondary materials, healthcare, etc., as well as in mapping and monitoring the effects of climate change on the one hand and mitigation on the other hand. It is obviously not only VITO¡¯s aim to map climate change and all its consequences, but certainly also to develop preventive measures. Cleantech offers the solution.

VITO counts approximately 600 highly qualified employees from diverse specialisations and collaborates with sector federations and their research centres, universities, colleges and European research institutes.

Since 1994, VITO built expertise related to market introduction, policy steering and sustainability of liquid, solid and gaseous biomass for energy. Recent research focus targets on the topic of bio-energy and biofuels:

- benchmarking sustainability criteria for solid and gaseous biomass between Member States (coordinator of a tender for EC DG ENER)
- monitoring the implementation of sustainability requirements and international sustainability schemes, and potential impact on trade (for IEA Bioenergy)
- building a roadmap for biofuels in Belgium (as input for the Belgian NREAP), including different uses of biofuels in the vehicle and fuel mix, and impact analysis of the different biofuel pathways (BIOSES project, Belgian research programme SSD)
- biofuel policy assessment and market analysis, in European projects ELOBIO (IEE), PREMIA (FP6), and Biofuel Cities (FP6)
- integrating and interlinking climate mitigation & adaption, bio-energy, food security, ecosystem services and biodiversity
- sustainability evaluation of energetic valorisation of biomass vs other applications of biomass, for the Flemish Waste administration
- feasibility studies for use of regional biomass in energy conversion parks
- reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

Since 2008 VITO participates in the IEA Bio-energy Task 40 group as National Task Leader for Belgium.

For more information, see also:

www.vito.be