Saving COOPerative Energy

Project Information

SCOoPE

Grant agreement ID: 695985

DOI

10.3030/695985

Project closed

EC signature date 3 February 2016

Start date 1 April 2016

End date 31 March 2019

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy

Total cost

€ 1 796 003,75

EU contribution

€ 1 796 003,75

Coordinated by

COOPERATIVAS AGRO-ALIMENTARIAS DE ESPANA U DE COOP SOCIEDAD COOPERATIVA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SCOoPE (Saving COOPerative Energy)

Reporting period: 2017-10-01 to 2019-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The idea for this project arose when several businesses of the target subsectors, associated to some members of this consortium, asked them for technical support to control their increasing costs in energy. Those targets are ARABLE CROPS DRYING AND STORAGE (NACE 1.6) MEAT AND POULTRY (NACE 10.1) DAIRY (NACE 10.5) TRANSFORMATION OF FRUIT AND VEGETABLES (NACE 10.3). The introduction of most advanced but proven technologies was not sufficiently integrated on these subsectors due to the intrinsic weaknesses of this kind of industries, isolated places far from the industrial states, heterogeneously management of agricultural raw materials, temporality, and so on. The tackle of this challenge is important both for industrial sector and the rural areas within they are located.
The project objective is to reduce energy consumption, by implementing cost-effective energy solutions, at a short term in a range between 10% and 15% directly in 81 businesses. This reduction should be achieved without any decrease in the production capacity of the companies and maintaining good socioeconomic and environmental conditions. For reaching these objectives, the project will work with the uptake of specific and cross-cutting innovative technologies and techniques, whose efficacy has been proven in other industrial sectors different from the agro-food sector, but not being familiar or rarely implemented in the agro-food sector.
On the other hand, the project pursues larger savings in the medium term with new affordable intelligent energy solutions, specifically by proving in operational environment the “Collaborative Energy Management Systems”. It will take advantage of complementarities and synergies among analysed industrial sites with similar characteristics or proximity and will use them for the improvement of their joint energy efficiency. For this purpose, 6 pilot industrial clusters in 5 different countries will be set up and uses for assessing the improvements in overall energy consumptions and its associated costs, that could be achieved by using common procedures based on the ISO 50.001 standard and supported by a specific software developed by the project.
Additionally, the overall investment and savings achieved by the project are 83.05 GWh and 31.47 M€ invested. These figures include the savings achieved by the implementation of energy efficiency measures (57.30 GWh) and by the implementation of renewable energy systems for self-producing energy needs (25.75 GWh). Also, the mentioned overall figures included the investments carried out during project lifetime (22.75 M€) and the planned investments that will be executive in the short term (8.71 M€).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The 3 years life of project SCOoPE might be summarized in 12 steps
1st - Extended Value Stream Maps (EVSM): the agro-industry processes were analysed and mapped for identifying the more energy consumer processes.
2nd – Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) were identified for benchmarking agro-industries energy performance.
3rd – Diagnosis tool, freely available, was developed to self-assess energy performance of agro-industries working on the four sectors of the project.
4th – Online training, based on 12 webinars that will allow to take a close look at energy efficiency in these sectors.
5th – Existing cost-effective solutions, market available, and addressed to identify the more usual deficiencies, were identified and compiled in a document including 83 cards:
6th – Screening tool for loans, was an Excel sheet including information from banks to broadly analyse the options for funding the energy saving measures.
7th – An Executive Report was issued to 84 cooperatives analysed by the project, including saving measures and the analysis of their implementation.
8th – 229 Face-to-face meetings, actually (229) meetings, has have been held between Key Actors (it is, companies that provides equipment or services to improve energy efficiency) and the involved cooperatives. Depending on the energy performance of each cooperative, a specific type of Key Actor was contacted for these meetings.
9th – Brokerage events to promote project results in 28 events in the 7 countries participating in the project.
10th – COLLABORATIVE ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS, the Dashboard tool analysed and benchmarked energy consumption in real time in the cooperatives of the clusters during one campaign.
11th – Dashboard tool has been a challenging software developed by the project to manage the clusters. It was the basis for individual monthly reports provided to 25 cooperatives involved in cluster.
12th – ISO 50.001 implementation was pre-analysed in the cooperatives participating in the clusters. The data obtained by the Energy Management System (the Dashboard) allowed to have the preliminary data (baseline) needed for implementing the ISO 50.001.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

SCOoPE project has been a project impact-driven, with ambitious objectives in terms of energy savings and investments. Also the implementation of clusters was challenging considering there was not any similar experience anywhere.
Considering the energy savings, it was envisaged an overall target of 85 GWhour of energy primary savings. The collection of data by March 2019 shows that during this year the savings will be set in 82.95 GWhour. It is quite reasonable that the later impulse of actions done in the project will mobilise in the next future some other decisions from cooperatives involved and it will finally imply that this target will be largely achieved.
Those savings are linked with investments on energy efficiency and renewable energies within 54 cooperatives from the total of 84 audited. In addition, 15 ones belonging to the clusters and other 22 more interacted in several ways with the project, mainly through 28 brokerage events carried out. In total those savings arise up to 31.47 M€ surpassing the target expected. In the same way than savings, it is expected that inertia of the project can grow up these figures. More than 200 local key actors, providers of technology and energy services, have been contacted and invited to 229 technical visits in the cooperatives for pushing new investments.
The knowledge repository issued by the project will surely help to improve energy management in agro-food sector and not only in the four subsectors in which SCOoPE was focused. In addition to the auditors trained during the project, more people has leveraged from Webinars and public documentation of the web for improving skills on energy efficiency.
The experience performed with the maintenance during a production campaign with clusters will be valuable for future actions on this area. The fact of having 6 clusters in 5 countries with 25 different companies sharing information and energy management has not been easy to develop. In some countries and sectors they are already making decisions to continue privately the experience. Clusters could be the next step to energy monitoring systems providing companies not only with a picture of their individual behaviour but a more informed position with regards of the rest of companies within their market segment. Benchmarking could be the driver for a steady pace of continuous energy performance improvement.

3rd poster for disseminating and promoting the project

2nd poster for disseminating and promoting the project

4th poster for disseminating and promoting the project

1st poster for disseminating and promoting the project