Agri for Energy II: Bioenergy business for rural areas

Agri for Energy II aims to facilitate and support business relationships between rural biomass producers and small and medium sized bioenergy consumers. This is done in three chosen areas: wood heating, decentralized pure vegetable oil (PVO) production and use, and biogas and biomethane production and use. The project will contribute to demonstrating that bioenergy can be an integral part of rural development and the use of renewable resources can create new business. The most important tool and approach to facilitate the desired development is to use the so-called "WSO keymarket start up action". It is an EU project mainly funded by the Intelligent Energy Europe program. There are project partners from Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Germany, Bulgaria, Finland and Sweden. Biomasses are essential tools as complementary energy instruments, and an essential element in supporting energy self-sufficiency. At the same time emissions of greenhouse gases from biomass may show significant reductions in comparison with the use of fossil fuels. In particular, decentralized production systems (wood heating systems, PPO and biogas) have shown high energy efficiency and a large reduction in GHGs.