Hi. I am Wouter Jan van den Berg. I am an environmental economist with more than 20 years experience
in acquiring funding, developing business and coordinating projects for clients who invent, develop and produce sustainable goods & services.
One of my first successes in this area was when I applied for a European LIFE Environment subsidy for PaperFoam in 1998, a company at that time being run by two colleagues of mine. PaperFoam started producing biobased packaging material by using the Injection Moulding technique, until then only applied for fossil oil based plastics. Other subsidies followed, like WBSO and ESF. From 2004 till 2015 I worked for two companies, being Icopal and KNN. At Icopal I successfully applied for regional, national and European subsidies like 'Groningen op voorsprong', WBSO, MIA VAMIL, LIFE Environment, Eco -Innovation used as co-financing for instance for the factory to recycle old bituminous roofing material. KNN is an SME with a special focus at the so-called biobased economy. My job at KNN has been to acquire subsidies, evaluate the economic feasibility as well as the procurement of biobased resources, like biopolymers. As part of my work for KNN I successfully applied for an European IEE subsidy for a biofuel-project of the province of Groningen. Later on I was hired to manage this project, called 'ADORE IT'. In 2015 I quit my job at KNN, and started my own company, ProSuME. I still work at Icopal as a project-leader subsidies & environment. The latter includes the set up of a management system for structural reduction of CO2 emissions based on the so-called CO2 performance-ladder. From 2015 on, I coordinate 'DISCOVER', a project focusing at developing a biobased roofing.