Description
The goal of the BECoop project was 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.
BECoop employed a market research process with qualitative and quantitative survey methods to offer a clear understanding of the dynamic community bioenergy heating landscape at regional, national and EU level. The project specified community bioenergy market uptake drivers and barriers and, building upon this information, further empowered policy makers to introduce enabling frameworks for community bioenergy. BECoop equiped administrative authorities with support schemes (replication guidelines, networking with more advanced regions, self-assessment tools, evidence from real practice) and skills (capacity building) so as to enable them to promote (as policy enablers, project facilitators and beneficiaries) such new forms of energy system governance and allow them to equally compete with other energy market actors.
Specifically, the main objectives of the BECoop project were to:
- Analyse the community market potential and identify the drivers and barriers for the uptake of bioenergy technologies in the community energy field.
- Develop and fine-tune a suite of supporting resources, tools, and services for community bioenergy heating project development, customised to the identified market uptake challenges.
- Create new bioenergy heating communities and boost the overall demand for bioenergy through increased social acceptance, capacity building and behavioural change.
- Deploy the BECoop support scheme for the market uptake of community bioenergy heating projects, demonstrate their reduced development efforts and assess their impact in 4 diverse contexts.
- Empower the community bioenergy ecosystem to scale across Europe through knowledge transfer and replication activities.
- Engage and empower policy makers towards the uptake of community bioenergy at regional, national and EU scale.
- Disseminate and communicate the results of the project to a wide audience, establishing synergies with relevant initiatives, while also ensuring the exploitation of results.
Q-PLAN responsibilities
- Development of BECoop Knowledge Exchange Platform and the creation of a Network of Interest (NOI) for the implementation of the knowledge transfer and replication processes
- Development of the BECoop catalogue for the provision of business and financial support services
- Deployment of business and financial support services
- Development of the Exploitation and Sustainability Plan
- Promotion of the project’s activities and findings through its wide national and European networks