A consortium led by the Austrian Energy Agency (AEA) developed the project "Uptake of Solid Bioenergy in European Commercial Sectors (Industry, Trade, Agricultural and Service Sectors) – Bioenergy for Business" for the EU-Programme Horizon 2020’s Call 2014 (LCE14). The project partners include a combination of energy agencies, national biomass associations and research-oriented partners with specialized knowledge on biomass from Northern, Southern, Central and Eastern Europe (Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, European Biomass Association (AEBIOM), Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Croatia, Greece, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine). The goal of this project is to support and promote the (partial) substitution of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) used for heating, by available bioenergy sources (industrial wastes, forest biomass, straw and other agricultural biomass) in the partner countries and beyond. In this context, the project will contribute to increase much-needed security of energy supply through lower dependence on fossil fuels from politically volatile sources. Target groups are, on the one hand, owners and operators of industrial heating plants (for private or district heating). On the other hand, actors who play an important role with regard to the value chain and to framework conditions crucial for the use of bioenergy heat will also be involved. Activities will be tailored to the needs of actors relevant to promising market segments in the industrial, commercial, services and agriculture sectors. Results of the project will include information about market potentials, capacity building/training, decision-support tools and communication activities targeted at relevant stakeholder, tools to support the careful assessment, planning and implementation of such projects, and dissemination of “best-practice” business models. Additionally, information about “best practice” support measures and policies will be made available.

The EU has started a progressive decarbonisation with the aim to become carbon neutral by 2050. Energy Intensive Industries (EII) are expected to play an important role in this transition as they represent 24% of the final energy consumption, but a clear long-term vision and strategy is required in order to remain competitive while contributing to the decarbonization targets of the EU. RE4Industry has been conceived under this framework with a twofold objective: to support EII in the identification and integration of renewable energy (RE) solutions together with the definition of Action Plans for decarbonisation, and to transform the EU industrial landscape into a large market niche for the uptake of RE while defining the appropriate framework conditions for short- and long-term scenarios. To this end, RE4Industry will set up and empower a comprehensive network of stakeholders and market actors who will identify feasible RE technologies and their market barriers and will interact with industry representatives to gather their needs, expectations, drivers and barriers towards the implementation of these technologies. Such an approach will be accomplished through a strong engagement strategy and the creation of RE4Industry Collaborative Network, who will receive from the project partners knowledge transfer material such as success cases, best practices, policy recommendations and technological roadmaps for promoting RE adoption. In parallel to the networking activities, RE4Industry will develop a baseline methodology for the design of Action Plans for decarbonisation in EIIs that will be developed and validated together with 3 representative industrial use cases from the steel, aluminium and chemical sectors. RE4Industry solid replication strategy will enable the roll out of this methodology in at least 8 additional use cases of different sectors within the project lifespan and the initiation of cross-border knowledge transfer activities to a total of 12 EU countries.