Project description
Conditions and tools for broader adoption of community bioenergy in Europe
Bioenergy is one of many renewable energy sources (RES) available to help meet increasing energy demands. Deriving from living organic materials, it is an RES that can be used to produce electricity, heat, fuels and various other products. However, compared to other RES, bioenergy has a slower development pace in the decentralised energy production which is a model that is set to play a crucial role in the future of the energy transition in the EU. The ambition of the EU-funded BECoop project is to foster a broad deployment of bioenergy technologies across Europe, by providing the necessary conditions and support tools for unlocking the underlying market potential of community bioenergy. The project also hopes to create links with the international bioenergy community and foster new partnerships.
Objective
While community energy is about to play a huge role for the future energy transition, bioenergy has a very slow development in decentralised energy production. BECoop’s ambition is to foster a broad deployment of bioenergy technologies in the heating sector (across Europe by providing all the necessary conditions and support tools for unlocking the underlying market potential of community bioenergy. By using BECoop support services and tools, energy communities and authorities will be able to (i) mobilize citizens around existing or new community bioenergy initiatives, (ii) boost local bioenergy demand by improving its image and social acceptance, and (iii) increase feasibility of their endeavors by identifying suitable technical, business and financial solutions, as well as by pooling expertise and partnerships from the wider EU bioenergy ecosystem. In order to showcase and build trust to our approach, we pilot our to a complementary set of 4 cases across Europe, targeting existing energy communities seeking to include bioenergy heating projects, and local/national authorities aiming at initiating novel bioenergy community structures in support of their clean energy transition goals. BECoop moves beyond local challenges as we replicate our concept to more EU cases, thus, improving the robustness and attractiveness of community bioenergy investments. BECoop will also create links between the international Bioenergy Community, increase its audience, and foster new partnerships. Relevant policy and regulatory structures will be empowered with empirical evidence indicating ways to transfer the community energy approach in bioenergy and heating. Finally, the project is backed by a multidisciplinary consortium covering all relevant stakeholders and knowledge requirements. It also includes key stakeholders that are considered natural recipients of its results (existing energy communities, RESCoop Federations and local/national authorities).
Fields of science
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CSA - Coordination and support actionCoordinator
1060 Sint-Gillis
Belgium
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.