Bioenergy Promotion (Baltic Sea Region Programme)

The Baltic Sea Region Bioenergy Promotion Project (Bioenergy promotion)

The project lasts from January 2009 to December 2011. The lead partner is the Department for Energy in Stockholm, Sweden.
The “Bioenergy promotion project” aims at strengthening the development towards a sustainable, competitive and territorially integrated Baltic Sea Region in the field of sustainable  use of bio-energy.
The partnership consists of organisations from all countries around the Baltic Sea as well as partners from Russia and Belarus. The organisations participating are key actors in their areas (on national and/or regional level) in order to facilitate the outputs considered in the project, meaning regional/local stakeholders for the purpose of these actions, and national authorities and research affiliations for actions related to this level.
The project will serve as the major BSR wide platform for cross-sectoral and transnational networking to facilitate information and knowledge exchange, coordinated policy development and design and application of bio-energy promoting instruments, as well as regional development. This will be facilitated by a holistic approach to find best solutions for policy, sub-regional and business problems. Information dissemination actions will be included to ensure meetings between market actors making business co-operation possible.

The Private Forest Center is together with the Tallinn Technical University national partner for Estonia in the project. PFC acts as national contact point during the course of the project, and the resources are used further after the project will be ended. In close cooperation with the international partners, PFC hopes to develop a basis for bioenergy use in Estonia and to raise the awareness especially in Estonian private forestry. With the start of the project 2009, PFC will be able to realize a research stressing a holistic overview on the situation for the use of bioenergy in Estonia. The results and experiences will be spread during national and international workshops in the course of the project. Forest owners can use the PFU platform to inform themselves. Individual consultation of private forest owners is foreseen for the second and third year (2010, 2011).


Expected outputs:
1.    Reports on policy issues, potentials etc, all to be used to enhance the biomass uptake, help establish ways to implement national BAPs and improve policies in the BSR
2.    Seminars and workshops for policy related issues relating National and Regional Biomass Action Plans, for exchange of knowledge and experiences in the region and between sub-regions
3.    Project facilitation meetings between market actors to make project initiation possible and business-to-business agreements
4.    Workshops and technology transfer demonstrations.
5.    Tools for regional planning, which analyses bio-energy issues especially infrastructure and employment
6.    Regional management plans
7.    Web portal with database of market actors in the field in the BSR, as well as a virtual brokerage site. This site will be incorporated in the existing web site to be developed, and focus on being a meeting place for technology suppliers and project owners to facilitate project initiations


The project consists of 4 components with own workpackages:

(1)    Policy development will be brought forward by cross-sectoral and transnational networking of key players and integration of the results from the analyses and pilot cases. In this is also included BSR wide data collection, analyses and indicator development that would contribute to amongst others the development and/or implementation of national and regional Biomass Action Plans.

(2)    The sub-regional development dimension of increased bio-energy supplies, production and use (including trade possibilities) will be assessed and highlighted by bringing the experience of demonstration cases and areas throughout the BSR. Information dissemination actions will be included to ensure regional collaboration cross-nationally.

(3)    Business development will be highlighted and used as a tool for reaching national/regional/EU policy will be elaborated. Best practices for sustainable economies will be collected and project facilitation looked upon. The ultimate aim of this work will incorporate investment speed enhancement and technology transfer through market actor (especially technology providers) collaboration. Information dissemination actions will be included to ensure meetings between market actors making business co-operation possible.

(4)    BSR and EU wide dissemination of information will be enhanced by the creation of a major BSR bio-energy web-portal and organisation of dissemination events via a wide range of bio-energy networks.

The accent for the Private Forest Center is on component 2 and 3. The Technical University of Tallinn will focus to component 1, while both Estonian partners will feed into component 4.

The Private Forest Center chose the Saare county as main implementation area. In cooperation with the Private Forest Union, the Estonian partners hope to develop a ready-to-use bioenergy plant package for forest owner associations.

Contact: Imre Kari: imre.kari@eramets.ee, tel: 00372 6836065

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Part-financed by the European Union  (European Regional Development Fund and European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument)