Live Debate: The future of biofuels

Tim King has been working as a newspaper journalist for 22 years, the last 11 of them in Brussels. After studying at Cambridge and Harvard Universities, he trained as a journalist in the west of England, then worked in London for the Daily Telegraph, where he had stints as environment reporter and education reporter.

He came to Brussels in January 1998 to work for The European. He was Brussels correspondent of Sunday Business, later renamed The Business, and covered agriculture, commodities and food for the financial newswire BridgeNews. He has also reported from Brussels for the Daily Telegraph, The Economist, and the Irish Times.

He joined European Voice as deputy editor in June 2004 and was appointed editor in July of this year.

Claude Turmes was first elected to the European Parliament by the voters of Luxembourg in 1999, and has been a vice-president of the Greens/EFA group since 2002. He is currently the co-ordinator for the Greens/EFA group on energy issues, and sits in the Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE), Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) and Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) committees.

During his time in the European Parliament, Claude Turmes has been rapporteur on the renewables directive (2008-2009) and on the second directive on the liberalisation of the energy market (2001-2003). He also drafted an own-initiative report on the share of renewable energy in Europe (2007-2008), and has been a co-initiator of the research platform “Energy Intelligent Europe”.

Before being elected to the European Parliament, he was an activist at Friends of the Earth Luxembourg, where he campaigned on climate change, energy and trade issues. He studied sports at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium and teaches yoga.

Paul Hodson has worked for what is now the Energy and Transport Directorate-General of the European Commission since 1995, and is currently deputy head of unit, regulatory policy and promotion of renewable energies. He is responsible for biofuels policy and for the renewable energy directive.

He has also worked on public service obligations in public transport and in communications. Before joining the Commission, he was head of transport policy at Manchester City Council and transport policy manager at Reading Borough Council. He began his career in the inner cities unit of the UK's National Council for Voluntary Organisations and has a degree in history from Cambridge University.

Sven-Olov Ericson is deputy director of the energy section of Sweden’s ministry for enterprise, energy and communications. He joined the energy section of the ministry during Sweden’s 2001 presidency of the European Union. His responsibilities are primarily sustainable development with a focus on sustainable production and use of bioenergy, energy efficiency through combined heat and power (CHP), and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) systems. He is also vice-chair of the International Energy Agency’s greenhouse gas programme.

Before joining the civil service, he worked for the Vattenfall group for 15 years, holding the position of senior adviser for sustainable development. He also served on the board of the Swedish bioenergy association from 1990 to 2001.

Géraldine Kutas is senior adviser for international affairs to the president of the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA).

Before joining UNICA, she was a researcher and a professor at Sciences-Po, Paris, and coordinator of the European Biofuels Policy research programme (EBP). She has worked as a consultant at the Inter-American Bank of Development and for several agri-business firms in France. Her fields of expertise include biofuels and agricultural policies, multilateral and regional trade negotiations in agriculture. She is the author or co-author of several international publications on these topics.

Imke Lübbeke, born in 1970, is EU Bioenergy Policy Officer at WWF’s European Policy Office in Brussels, a post she has held since 2007. She focuses on the implementation of sustainability criteria for bioenergy. Before she came to Brussels, she worked for WWF Germany in Frankfurt and Berlin, on EU agriculture policy and rural development. In 2005, she began focusing on bioenergy and sustainability and built up WWF Germany’s competence on sustainable bioenergy. She also founded and led an NGO platform on sustainable biomass with German development and environmental organisations, financially supported by the Federal German Ministry of Environment, Nature Protection and Nuclear Safety. From 1999 to 2001 she worked with the German Farmers Union in Bonn and Berlin.

Imke Lübbeke studied agricultural science in Göttingen, Germany, specialising on agriculture and the environment.

Luis Scoffone is vice-president, alternative energies at Shell International.

He joined the future fuels and CO2 division in August 2008 as vice-president for biofuels and added responsibilities for other alternative energies including hydrogen and gas to liquids in 2009. In this role Luis has total responsibility for leading Shell’s biofuels business towards the goal of materiality by 2015 and in particular as it transitions from technology and planning to full operations.

He has worked in Shell’s downstream businesses for his entire 31-year career with Shell. Throughout this time he has held a variety As vice-president of lubricants Latin America in 2003, he was part of the team that developed the strategy that led to the creation of Shell’s global lubricants business. In January 2004, he became global vice-president of transport lubricants.

In 2005, he became president of Jiffy Lube International, a wholly-owned, indirect subsidiary of Shell and presided over the company’s expansion in Asia and in particular, China.

He holds a chemical engineering degree from the University of Bahía Blanca in Argentina, an executive programme degree in competitive strategy from Harvard University and an executive business programme degree from the INSEAD business school in France.