A people-powered energy system: activating the community energy market for bioenergy - Energy Post
Among others, lack of preparedness for communities to tap the full bioenergy market potential[1], lack of bioenergy stakeholders’ awareness of the potential of communities and missing/ unsupportive (local, regional and national) framework and policy conditions. For a people-powered energy system, the Horizon 2020-funded project BECoop (2020-2023) aims at putting communities in charge of their local renewable (bio)energy generation.
Alongside the challenging nature of increasing RE heating penetration, there is, at the same time, a significantly untapped RE market uptake potential that should be seriously considered, bioenergy. Deriving from living organic materials, bioenergy can be used to produce, among else, electricity, heat, and fuels. Even though not fully exploited, it holds, in practice, the highest potential for replacing fossil fuelled heat and remains the leading technology in the EU RE heating sector. As experts therefore suggest, the expansion of bioenergy projects across Europe would be of crucial importance for meeting the EU-established targets.
Apart from scientific and technological innovations, renewable energy uptake also relies on peoples’ perceptions. In this context, energy communities and cooperatives (RESCoops) provide an ideal framework, they can empower a more effective, fair, and democratised clean-energy transition, holding a series of benefits: they help fight climate change and reduce GHG emissions, contribute in mitigating energy poverty, support job creation, energy supply security and more.
Community bioenergy schemes can play a catalytic role in the market uptake of bioenergy heating technologies, yet their deployment nowadays remains significantly slow. While there are, arguably, numerous energy cooperatives established across Europe, their vast majority focuses on exploiting solar and wind energy with biomass-based communities accounting for only a minor share of existing RESCoops. In addition, energy communities’ dispersion and range appear restricted, with 80% of them located in either Germany or Denmark, whereas, in terms of production, electricity takes the lion’s share, in contrast to heating.
The project aims to make community bioenergy projects more appealing to potential interested actors and to foster new links and partnerships among the international bioenergy community. The project will investigate and specify the community bioenergy market uptake facilitators and barriers and, building upon this information, further empower policymakers to introduce enabling frameworks for community bioenergy. 4 pilot cases across Europe (Spain, Greece, Poland, Italy) will target existing energy communities seeking to include bioenergy heating projects (district heating, pellets stove, forest biomass), and local/national authorities aiming at initiating novel bioenergy community structures in support of their clean energy transition goals. The selected cases represent diverse framework conditions, community bioenergy maturity, RE penetration in the heating and cooling market and socioeconomic environments, thus, providing a highly complementary synthesis of evidence.
[1] This is mostly due to the cost of establishing such projects and the required project development effort and time. Additional barriers such as technical or business, as well as limited awareness of the multiple benefits prevent bioenergy projects from emerging. Finally, the know how and good practices established in one region are not easily transferrable to another.
Are you part of a RESCOOP/ renewable energy cooperative? Are you a local authority or policymaker? We would love to hear your views on the potential for bioenergy market expansion! Please take 4 min for this survey available in 7 languages:
https://copenhagenbusiness.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_aXYjfkpXq48uyyx
About Marine Perrio
Marine is Senior Communication Officer, leading all communication activities of IEECP and the projects IEECP is coordinating / involved in.
She has 10 years of experience in communications and sustainability and a MSc in management and communications, obtained at the EM Lyon Business and Management School, France. She has strong communication skills on technical subjects and is involved in EU and international projects. Her day-to-day activities include managing websites, newsletters, Social Media accounts, organising conferences and supervising the publication of reports. She has worked / works on several IEE, H2020 and FP7 projects (Enefirst, Turnkey Retrofit, Build Upon², CommONEnergy, ZEBRA2020, Cohereno, iBroad, ExcEED, EUCalc, Build Up…).
Previously, she was Head of Communications at the Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE) where she was, for 7 years, responsible for the definition and implementation of the communication strategies of BPIE and EU projects, Marketing and Communications expert for Intertek RDC, an Environmental Consulting agency in Brussels and Sustainability Manager for Woodstower, a Street Art and Music Festival.