Industrial symbiosis in the wake of the energy crisis – new ways of working to promote increased biogas production through collaboration

Production and use of biogas is a circular system that can contribute to energy supply and climate change. However, the biogas system needs to involve industrial actors and other organisations in order to develop the full potential of the biogas market.

The project, with Halmstad University, IVL (the Swedish Environmental Research Institute) and Vessige Biogas as partners, will work to understand driving forces and obstacles for industrial symbiosis in the context of biogas, and to identify suitable forms of cooperation between stakeholders.

The project is financed by the Swedish Energy Agency and runs between May 2023 and December 2025 with the aim of identifying the actors, their roles and potential interactions within the system for industrial symbiosis. Business partners from different parts of the value chain who have an interest in developing the biogas market, sustainable business models and industrial symbiosis will be involved, and a framework for establishing practice-based business development including collaboration between stakeholders will be created. This is expected to result in more circular solutions involving the biogas industry, and that more biogas can be used and replace natural gas.

The project contains various work packages that will explore how the concept of industrial symbiosis can be applied in a biogas context, what driving forces and obstacles exist for the establishment of industrial symbiosis within the case of biogas, and finally develop a prototype for a collaboration model that will facilitate meetings and interactions within industrial symbioses in which biogas actors are included.