Report on the Biogas Social Innovation Platforms and Communities

This document describes the emerging biogas communities in the three targeted ISABEL regions, Baden-Württemberg in Germany, Central and Eastern Macedonia and Thrace in Greece and Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the Humber in UK. Similarly to community energy initiatives, a community biogas can be defined as a biogas project where communities (of place or interest) exhibit a high degree of ownership and control, as well as benefiting collectively from the outcomes.

Through the engagement and community building activities (such as workshops and info-days), each emerging community and stakeholder platform started to develop their own vision for a biogas community. This vision contains various dimensions, such as: the value proposition of the community, that is the innovation and feature that most attract the stakeholders in joining the biogas community; the structural elements such as feedstock, digestate and energy flows related to the foreseen biogas system, and its size and scale; the organizational structure which will coordinate relations and actions of the stakeholders.

As the community building is an ongoing process happening along the whole ISABEL project, also its next planned steps are included, together with potential challenges and opportunities, to give a long term perspective and integrating lessons learnt from past activities.

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