Use Case 1: Italy
Partners: Tecnoalimenti, Confagricoltura, Fattoria Solidale Del Circeo and EnGreen as supporting Research and Technology Organisation
Climate: Mediterranean
In this use case main agro-industrial, farmers and industrial associations join forces to jointly address RES integration at farm level along the whole agri-food value chain, aiming to exhibit a low carbon footprint food system in large-scale trade and transferring its benefits to final consumers.
Key objective: Along the project execution, involved associations will jointly bring stakeholders to gather available information, interests and perceptions on barriers on RES integration at farm level and how it can impact or create synergies all along the food value chain and its logistics.
Use Case 2: Denmark
Partners: ConTerra and Food & Bio Cluster Denmark as supporting Research and Technology Organisation
Climate: Continental/arctic
The Danish use case counts with already established datasets on RES production at farm level with special focus on biogas production. In the last years, overall economic boundary conditions have been beneficial for large scale biogas plants deployment over the country, but recent developments in energy costs as well as demands arising from EU-Taxonomy/ESG makes small scale biogas plants increasingly interesting to individual or groups of farmers. Accordingly, it is expected to count with additional reports on this regard along the project execution.
Key objectives: The Biogas planning tool will be enhanced as a comprehensive database at farm level (barn/field) for Denmark. New developments will allow the mapping of current activity level and potentials for biogas fueled energy production, evaluating its impact on GHG-emission and nutrient balances (N and P).
Use Case 3: Spain
Partners: Viñas del Vero, Viñedos del Rio Tajo, Sorigué and BETA Technological Centre & CIRCE as supporting Research and Technology Organisations
Climate: Mediterranean
Viñas del Vero and Sorigué are two Spanish farming companies, a winery and a dairy company respectively, at the forefront in the exploration of decarbonisation strategies and deployment of RES technologies in their farms.
Key objective: The Spanish use case will apply HarvRESt solutions to enhance the production management and increase overall benefits with the lower environmental impact, as well as to produce necessary data to fill the identified knowledge gaps and deploy experimental solutions developed throughout the HarvRESt community.
At Viñas del Vero effects on vineyard production through a digital based management and optimization of RES assets will be assessed. These activities will also include the electrification of machinery, thus exploring the potential in terms of cost and carbon footprint reduction of electrification and how it can be exploited together with green hydrogen or metanization techniques at farm level. Complementarily, an experimental report on Agro-PV to study the impact in relation to identified KPIs will take place to dynamically feed the HarvRESt decision support system. Additionally, Sorigué’s bioproducts for improving soil quality will be tested on the site.
At Sorigué the main interest is to collect data from the biorefinery to model the biogas production from agro-residues. Furthermore, the fertilizer potential of the nutrients recovered from the resulting by-product (the digestate), which is currently considered one of the expected trade-offs, will be assessed in order to mitigate RES impacts, increase the circularity in the farm and diversify the farm incomes. The nutrient recovery will improve soil quality, water retention, and conservation. In addition, methane production from recycled CO2 sources to be used as fuel itself or as an H2 energy carrier will be analyzed.
Use Case 4: Norway
Partners: Grønn Gårdsenergi AS (GGE) and NORCE as supporting Research and Technology Organisation
Climate: Alpine
In this case GGE and NORCE will jointly analyze how to develop and expand a smart energy system that supports the full decarbonization process of GGE. A thorough analysis of the challenges for accessing the data in order to achieve centralized and optimized management of the assets composing the system will be performed.
Key objective: The Norwegian use case will manage the integration of the energy storage system interaction with the different renewable assets. Moreover, the study on the coordination with farm activities will be made to optimize available resources. Moreover, given the interest of GGE on profiting manure waste for biogas production and Combined Heat and Power installation, will establish synergies with Sorigué’s HarvRESt activities as well as with the Danish use case to explore the deployment of this technology and replication of the partner’s solutions.