(Foto: Andrea Sonnleitner)

After the first round took place in July 2023, the second part of a citizen panel on bioenergy took place in the premises of BEST in Wieselburg Mid- February. These citizen panels are carried out in four states of the EU, namely Austria, Bulgaria, Italy and Sweden.

Last summer the citizens created visions, that should represent their thoughts on Just Transition and Social Innovation and bioenergy in the context of agriculture and forestry. In fall and winter the developed visions were discussed with experts in Brussel and online and 14 policy recommendations were elaborated. These policy recommendations were now presented to the citizens, discussed, evaluated and ranked by the participants.

The 5 Top ranked recommendations by Austrian citizens are:

1. Promote education on bioenergy and biomass in schools.
2. Mandatory education courses in schools on the topic of climate change and its consequences.
3. Introduce tax or consumer incentives to promote a certain kind of behavior (such as collecting biomass).
4. Work on improving waste policy so that the regulations are easier to follow and make sense from an economic and societal point of view.
5. Ensure appropriate services are in place on a national level to fill any knowledge gaps on the procedures related to local bioenergy solutions.

The Citizen Panels are part of the  Horizon Europe 2020 project ETIP-Bioenergy 2022-2025 (Grant n°.101075503).

2024-03-01