The National Meeting was taking place at the Slovak Chemical Library, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava on 18th August 2017. At the National Meeting 22 participants from 7 institutions and 3 Universities were participating.

The meeting was opened by Prof. Miertuš, Director General of ICARST, who thanked to all participants for their participation and especially to the main organizer Prof. Bakoš (ICARST), who is responsible for the implementation of the ENERGY BARGE project on behalf of ICARST.

Prof. Bakoš presented the topic “Mapping of bioenergetic sector in Danube belt”, followed by “Building the green energetic and logistic belt along Danube”. A third lecture was presented by Prof. Ondrejovič about the Work Package “Implementation and Policy”. Afterwards a round table discussion was organized where a rich discussion developed.

Several experts contributed to the round table discussion, namely Prof. Katuščák, Prof. Chodák, Sr., Dr. Šurina, Mr. Ceben, Prof. Bakoš, Prof. Ondrejovič and Prof. Miertuš. The National Meeting provided a good platform for the coordination of the further implementation of the project, especially for the Work Packages “Mapping bioenergy sector” and “Implementation and Policy”. A very interesting discussion implied several contributions from the audience:

• It was commented that it would be useful to assess in more detail the value of different types of wood which will influence a sustainability of various options for the use of wood (including waste wood). This will affect also sustainability of logistics.
• Centralized option (which include the longer distance transport) vs decentralized option of the transformation of should be critically compared with decentralized options of transformation of biomass to energy
• It was commented that the LCA method could be considered in some particular cases to assess viability of various options.
• Possibilities of a country pilot study have been discussed as well.
• It was also proposed that along with the implementation of the project which is focused mainly on logistic issues, it might be interesting to prepare a follow-up vision (future project proposal) in which the topics of integrated value chains could be considered including also biowaste availability, transformation technology (including biorefinery concept), technology transfer, knowledge transfer, harmonization of methodologies, e learning, etc.