Triggering Sustainable Biogas Energy Communities through Social Innovation
The Circular Economy has high economic potential, aside from addressing the global problem of reducing carbon emissions. It is also a driver for a modernised economy with high environmental relevance contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals. But such complex processes require innovative approaches especially when aiming to bring about systemic change. Not only technological innovations but also strong and novel partnerships and collaborations are required.
Building social capital is central to the notion of bringing transformation within the entire circular economy model. The ISABEL programme has envisaged to achieve this by creating complex adaptive social systems whereby a decentralised and community managed energy systems can be created which not only aims to create new business models but also a clean, green economy by creating value from waste.
Ananya is a current Research Fellow working on a Horizon 20: 20 project: Enhancing Sustainable Biogas Communities through Social Innovation, using her community based conservation knowledge and development background to progress the stakeholder engagement work. She has also developed the evaluation strategy alongside promoting the idea of community biogas, co-designing business planning processes between regional stakeholders and the rest of the project using social innovation tools from different project partners. She is also interested in the concept of Building Social Capital to implement the circular economy and the systems thinking approach, required to bring about systems change in a holistic way.
