Overview
The purpose of the Coordination Action Biofuel Cities European Partnerships is to demonstrate the use of new and innovative technologies that permit extensive use of biofuels in cities covering the complete chain from feedstock to biofuels production, distribution and utilisation in vehicle fleets.
The project aimed to develop a European Partnership allowing organisations (local governments, companies, institutions, fleet owners and other stakeholders) that work on biofuels, or are interested in working with biofuels, to find and exchange information, find partners and start new initiatives. New and existing projects on biofuels were invited to be part of Biofuel Cities, in order to coordinate efforts and actively contribute to reaching the targets of Directive 2003/30/EC.
Specific objectives of the project were:
- To build an attractive European Partnership in which biofuel and energy efficient vehicle stakeholders and local governments and industrial and commercial end-users meet and are encouraged to form new partnerships;
- To validate the results and monitor in an independent and uniform way the progress of biofuel projects, both R&D and demonstration, in order to advise industrial and commercial stakeholders, national local government and the European Commission on further implementation of biofuels and energy efficient vehicles;
- To support the biofuel stakeholders and the local governments in their communication, dissemination and awareness raising activities by supplying tools developed within this project, based on the experiences from the project execution and the resulting information from all stakeholders.
The project partners provided a framework, called Biofuel Cities European Partnership, to enable the following processes:
- A motivation process to: 1) raise awareness of Biofuel Cities and the topic it deals with (the application of biofuels in urban settings and/or by small- or medium scale enterprises), 2) generate interest towards this topic and 3) involve and engage people.
- A capacity process to communicate 1) the profile of existing instruments (policies, projects, tools, etc.) and the assessment of their potential value, 2) how to utilise and profit from these instruments and the knowledge that went into them, and 3) assistance in undertaking, communicating and sustaining implementation of biofuel activities based on the assessed instruments and knowledge.
The motivation process challenged the potential users of Biofuel Cities services to develop an interest and change their behaviour by motivating them to act, whilst the capacity process helped the user to acquire knowledge and realise change by enabling them to act.
In addition to the European Partnership, the Co-ordination Action also assessed and monitored biofuel projects progress and assessed the local sustainable mobility policies by undertaking activities on:
- Validation of results of dissemination and awareness raising activities for biofuel initiatives among local governments, closely related to an identification of the local needs, possibilities and bottlenecks;
- Independent monitoring of demonstration activities and practical project progress within cities. Based on this, the European stakeholders and the Commission will be advised on the progress of the implementation of biofuels.
The Biofuels Cities European Partnership aimed to address three basic target groups:
- biofuel consumers;
- biofuel deliverers, with producers and deliverers being two important subgroups; and
- biofuel frame-workers.
Funding
Results
The Biofuel Cities European Partnership was a forum for the application of biofuels. Open to all stakeholders in the area of biofuels for vehicles, it offered:
- www.biofuel-cities.eu - one-stop shop for information on biofuels application;
- online facilities, workshops and study tours to exchange and network with your peers and learn from experts;
- news, publications and tools to provide information, guidance and support.
Biofuel Cities European Partnership shared unique and extensive experiences not only on biofuels research and application and sustainable mobility, but also on the specific needs of local governments, enterprises, as well as on requirements for assessment and communication.
European Partnership participants had full access to all features.
During the course of the project, the Biofuel Cities European Partnership produced an array of reports and guides published on the project website.