The main objectives of this Concerted Action within the AIR program are:

- Coordination of the different projects and activities concerning a gasification of biomass within the EU and the EFTA countries.

- Improvement of the information flow between the different working groups resp. different research programmes (eg APAS) and research institutions (eg IEA) and development of a strategy to improve the information transfer within Europe.

- Identification of R&D-lacks and based on this the development of a research and development resp. a market introduction strategy for the EU resp. Europe. Also recommendations for future activities and promising projects will be formulated.

These goals will be achieved by the following activities:

- The results of the different activities, projects, demonstration plants etc. carried out in the past in EU and EFTA-countries will be analyzed, documented, compared and evaluated.

- An economical evaluation of the present and future gasification technologies will be realized and the results are analyzed on the background of the current and for the future expected energy system in Europe.

- Workshops of scientists and manufactures and an open seminar will be organized to collect the information, to develop the strategies and to discuss the results of this Concerted Action.

- Compilation of a report of the national and international activities on the research field of biomass gasification during the last two decades, a characterization of the different technologies and processes, a short summary of the project results and a list of the groups active in this field within the EU and EFTA countries. Based on this a complete overview of the current state of the different technologies and processes will be given. The final goal is the publication of this information in a book.