19 March 2010: The Global Bioenergy Partnership (GBEP) convened the sixth Technical Working Group meeting of the Task Force on Financing, Capacity Building and Technology Cooperation for Sustainable Bioenergy in The Hague, the Netherlands. The working group is tasked with aiding in the deployment of technologies for sustainable bioenergy development.

This meeting discussed a revised scope and programme of work for a new Task Force on Financing, Capacity Building and Technology Cooperation for Sustainable Bioenergy. In this regard, three new focal areas were adopted: information sharing and coordinating action to facilitate bioenergy financing; capacity building for policy makers; and the development and implementation of bioenergy action plans.
At the meeting, revised versions of three reports were presented on: funding bioenergy projects; analytical tools for capacity building in the assessment of sustainable bioenergy; and the deployment of sustainable bioenergy technology. Partners and observers are invited to send comments on these documents to the GBEP Secretariat by 9 April 2010.
The GBEP was launched in January 2007 in response to the July 2005 Gleneagles Plan of Action of the G8 +5 (Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa), which called for launching “a Global Bioenergy Partnership to support wider, cost effective, biomass and biofuels deployment, particularly in developing countries where biomass use is prevalent.” Its partners consist of 19 national governments and ten international organizations, with an additional 23 governments and seven organizations acting as observers. Representatives from the following organizations attended the Working Group meeting: FAO, IDB, IEA, UNEP and UNIDO. [Meeting Website]