The synthesis of desk research and interviews reveals regional/national and EU-level factors (such as socio-economic, legal, political, environmental and technical considerations) and value chain parameters that can influence the establishment of community bioenergy across the EU.
The main identified empowering factors at the local level include:
- the fast transposition (into national law) of the RED II Directive, further adopting the energy community concept officially introduced and defined under this legislative act;
- the consideration of bioenergy uptake in local development strategies;
- the country level ambitious goals in the field of energy transformation;
- the competitive prices of biomass fuels as well as domestic biomass boilers and
- the increasing local activities and awareness raising events related to RES development at the local level.
Major hindering factors identified include:
- the varying and often low speed transposition of RED II into national law;
- limitations in terms of RESCoop operation (power, area, membership, scope of activity and ambition); and
- low levels of awareness related to bioenergy and biomass combustion.
The analysis of social aspects reflects a strongly positive attitude of local communities towards bioenergy heating projects. In addition, the study of technical and economic factors showed no significant barriers against their uptake
The key findings of this work shed light on aspects that need to be further inspected (social acceptance, supply chain coordination, legal and public framework conditions etc.) and contribute at identifying whether a series of crucial aspects is indeed addressed by local and EU relevant policies. This is vital information upon which BECoop can better target and fine-tune the project’s foreseen actions.