Work package 2: Communicating Bioenergy Promotion 2 to everyone

With work package 2, we are aiming at increasing the knowledge about the opportunities for bioenergy and its possible benefits for rural and forestry areas. In addition, the purpose is to enhance communication between project partners and market actors on bioenergy issues.

Objectives

• Disseminate knowledge about best practices and demonstration cases in the area of sustainable bioenergy.
• Improve information exchange and communication between market actors and defined stakeholders
• Enhance co-operation between regions and business possibilities of sustainable use of bioenergy
• Raise public awareness of sustainable use of bioenergy as noteworthy, cost-efficient and locally employing form of energy production

General information

The aims of work package 2 will be achieved by using several different communication channels and tools such as website, newsletters, conferences and smaller workshops.

Work Package 3: Demonstration and transfer

The countries of the Baltic Sea Region differ in their geographical and socio-economic characteristics but face the same challenge to increase the use of renewable energies as outlined in the EU Strategy for the region. The main goal of this Work Package is to support regional bioenergy-strategies to support implementation of regional bioenergystrategies implementation in selected regional demo cases and transfer of experiences from the demo activities to other regions.

Objectives

• support of regional strategies implementation in selected regional demo cases
• transfer of experiences from the demo to other regions in the BSR countries
• testing and validating the sustainability principles and criteria within market actors in the demo and other Baltic Sea Regions

General information

More ongoing information about the work package; content and activities. Regional demonstration cases will be developed and fully presented:

Sweden - Skaraborg Västra Götaland; Bioenergy as key driver in agricultural and green business development

Denmark - Kalundborg (region Zealand): Greening the industrial symbiosis

Poland – Gdynia - Pomerania Region: Integrated use of biodegradable waste and other types of biomass for fuel production

Germany – Rotenburg: Use of landscape protection and maintenance material

Finland – North Karelia: Creation of jobs and local prosperity with wood chip district heating plant, lowering dependence of external energy sources

Latvia - Region Tukums: Promotion of new small scale wood boiler technology and national support instruments for replacement of old installations

Lithuania – Kaunas: Encouraging the elaboration of local RES Energy Plans

Work package 4: Strategy and Programme development

The overall aim of work package 4 is to strengthen and to capitalize key Main stage and Extension stage project results. This will be accomplished by encouraging and enabling the regions and municipalities in the Bioenergy Promotion 2-project to develop and to implement integrated bioenergy strategies, which reflect the principles developed during the Main stage project.

Objectives

• Assist/advise demo regions in capacity development, implementing their bioenergy strategies and promoting transfer to other regions and municipalities in the BSR.
• Establish links to public and private utility companies in order to promote validation and testing of the sustainability principles and criteria developed during the MSP.
• Feed MSP results into policy formulation processes on a macro-regional and transnational level within and beyond the BSR
• Feed MSP project results into EU funding programmes

General information

Promoting the use of renewable energy sources including bioenergy is among the funding priorities of most regional operational programmes, but the sustainable use of renewable energy sources and consideration of sustainability principles and criteria have not or only marginally been addressed so far. Negotiations are underway for the reform of the funding programmes for the post 2013 period which offer good opportunities to strengthen key results of the Main stage and also the Extension stage project by feeding them into the programming process at national and regional level.

The project will draft recommendations on how to integrate sustainability of bioenergy into the new operational programmes. The recommendations will be made available to the programme committees responsible for discussing and drafting the programmes valid for the next EU financial perspective.

Further to that the project strives to be available to Baltic Sea Region relevant transnational forums such as the Baltic 21 or the Nordic Council of Ministers. The strategic outputs on sustainable deployment of bioenergy may be worth to find entrance into strategic and political discussion focusing on the Baltic Sea Region Strategy and Action Plan. In close cooperation with the responsible actors, especially with CBSS Expert Group on Sustainable development, the project will deliver tailor made argumentation and input to such discussions.

The project will derive lessons from the demo, transfer, and testing activities and feed them into regional and national policy formulation processes in order to improve policy frameworks and support schemes enabling regions and municipalities to develop and formulate integrated strategies to promote sustainable bioenergy production and consumption.

Work Package: Business

The main driving force in the bioenergy market is the possibility to make business. Therefore WP5 Business focuses its efforts on “match-making” in the field of bioenergy market. Mapping the potential stakeholders, identifying state of the art in technology, summarising the best practices in business development, providing a virtual broker platform, facilitating opportunities to create networks, clusters, public-private partnerships - this is what this work package seeks to achieve.

Objectives

• Provide information to ensure sustainable, transparent business possibilities between BSR countries in the field of bioenergy, through comprehensive mapping of stakeholders, technologies and best practices in business development
• Establish a BSR wide virtual broker platform for bioenergy business developments
• Support bioenergy market “match-making” trough facilitation of opportunities to create networks, clusters, public-private partnerships and potential project development

General information

More ongoing information about the work package. There are four tasks under WP5, led by the following Partners: Nordic Energy Research from Norway, Spektrum from Poland, Pomcert from Poland and Swedish Energy Agency from Sweden. The Lead Partners are currently finalizing the methodology of realization of the set tasks and soon entering the realization phase. It is important to note that activities under WP5 are interlinked with some tasks under WP4 Subregions, such as mapping of business and industry analyses or activities of Regional Network Points. We are thus anticipating that the outcomes of both WP4 and WP5 will create the effect of synergy to multiply the possibilities of sustainable business contacts between regions and countries in BSR. WP5 are also interlinked with WP3 where activities in WP5 analys how sustainability createria established in WP3 can be applied for a new business development.