On December 1st 2021, Bonnie Norman, President of E3 International, participated at Ne to. 0!, the second annual policy conference on how to win the Balkans air-pollution dodgeball hosted by the RES Foundation and held on December 1st and 2nd. Norman was one of the four panelists at the Panel 2 “The technology for Ne to. 0!” talking about best practices and approaches to the use of bioenergy and other renewable energy forms aiming to combat carbon footprint, mitigate climate change and support the just transition. The other panelists were: Nikola Stamenov (CWP Global), Gustav Melin (Svebio) and Edo Jerkic (CBDO Megajoule).
Bonnie Norman talked about the SLLEI Initiative on which E3 International has been working for the past 16 months with the partners CIFOR/ICRAF and with the support of the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), providing details on fast-growing energy crops – energy willow. She said “What’s important is that we are focusing on degraded lands. When we look at the Initiative that we have going in Serbia and the Western Balkans, what you see as critical is taking advantage of 1.6 mil ha of abandoned and degraded land. These crops are, in fact, amazing because energy willow has vital alleviation capabilities – it can pull the toxins out of the soil, it provides quite an adaptation functions of preventing sledding, of lowering temperatures, etc. When you plant these plants where you would not grow food, where no one wants to use the land because it’s the lower cadastral land or it needs to be completely restored, it really provides an amazing opportunity to integrate bioenergy into the renewable energy portfolio to reach the climate goals. What we really like about it that it provides a higher number of jobs for the just transition”.
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