EAGER

The expansion of renewable energies aims at meeting the energy demand of the EU while replacing fossil fuels, but it requires large areas of land. At the same time, food security is threatened by the impacts of climate change and a growing world population. Agrophotovoltaics (APV) can mitigate the confl icting interests between agriculture and open space photovoltaic systems for viable land, as it allows to produce energy and food at the same time on the same place through a combination of farming and solar generation with a total land use effi ciency of up to 186%. This is why the EAGER project aims at improving policies to ease APV in Europe. It will enable the defi nition and set-up of favourable policy framework conditions for implementing APV as a praxis-oriented concept for achieving Greener Europe. By generating a common understanding of suitable APV settings and contexts, identifying, analysing and transferring good practices, changing behaviour among policy actors of the participating regions towards supporting and expanding APV in their regions, 7 policy instruments will be improved by 2027.The 10 partners and 3 associated policy responsible authorities, coming from Germany, Belgium, Lithuania, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and Poland, are committed to high quality and effi cient exhange of experience and policy improvement, acknowledging that the topic of APV is multi-layered and complex. It considers the policy fi elds of energy, agriculture, spatial development and land use, with impacts on economic development, and has the potential to contribute to sustainability and energy security. Its novelty in the regions encourages out of the box thinking and an innovative interpretation of good practices in the broadest sense. The creation of 3 co-coaching partnerships will optimize the learning process and guarantee high quality policy improvement and impact assessment processes.