Linneborn Prize

This accomplishment is being awarded on the occasion of the 19th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition - From Research to Industry and Markets, Berlin, Germany, 6 - 10 June 2011. The European Linneborn Prize was established in 1994 for outstanding contributions to the development of energy from biomass. The Prize is named in honour of Johannes Linneborn, a pioneer of wood gasification. Deeply rooted in human ethics, he had far reaching visions on the world’s development, on health, transport and agriculture.

The 2011 Prize Winner is

Kai Sipilä

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

The prize is awarded to him for his leadership in promoting biomass as a sustainable energy source within the European Union and worldwide for more than 20 years.

Kai Sipilä has been working mostly in the biomass thermochemical conversion technologies for power, heat and transportation fuels. Biomass based transportation fuels, especially second generation biofuels with emphasis on new business integration to biorefinery industrial platforms have been of great interest with emphasis on European and national 2020 targets of 10% RES in transport. Complimentary to the new production technologies, his interest has also been the engine and vehicle technologies to develop modern drop-in biofuels.

The European 2020 targets need significant amount of biomass from traditional and new sources. On top of technical issues, he has been assisting the European Commission by a membership of the program committee in 5 FWP, in 6 FWP role of project coordinator are some RTD projects as well as coordinator of the NoE Network of Excellence for Bioenergy. In the SET-Plan, he has been involved in the industrial technology platforms of Biofuels as well as Forest based industry. Currently he is co-ordinating the EERA Bioenergy joint programme.

 For supporting the policy measures of national authorities in Finland, he has been in 2006 the chairman of the Biofuels implementation committee and assisting the Ministries for the national implementation plan for 20% of RES in transport and 38% renewable energy by 2020 in Finland with various policy measures such as support plan to new demonstration plans and revised fuel taxation in 2010. Complimentary to the national and European activities, he participated on IEA Bioenergy agreement as Finnish ExCo member since 1993.