Agriculture and Energy Efficiency

The central objective of AGREE is to put energy efficiency in agriculture on the research agenda
based on its short and long term potential and the associated economical and ecological effects.
More specifically, this means transferring the results of AGREE to the European Commissions, the
CWG AgriEnergy, national organisations that fund agricultural research and relevant European
branch organisations (such as COPA COGECA). Also, it means linking up with existing networks
with relevance to the issue, such as R&D networks (i.e. European Technology Platforms). To this
end, it is important to actively involve stakeholders in the project.
The central objective will be met by the following set of actions to be taken up by AGREE and its
expected outcomes:
 Making an inventory of economic feasible energy saving measures either taken up by
the agricultural industry, or close to introduction, in different European countries under
various climatic conditions.
 Based on the inventory, proposing actions to promote energy efficiency in European
agriculture addressing dissemination pathways and pitfalls to innovation.
 Initiating transnational sharing of knowledge on energy efficiency measures for short
term introduction.
 Realising an agenda for transnational research collaboration using a participatory
approach. This Agenda will target the potentials offered by several agricultural
production systems, building types and designs, ventilation and other climate control
processes, use of inputs, in agriculture machinery design and use and farm logistics.
 Indicating the added value of transnational R&D on energy efficiency in agriculture.
 Indicating the potential benefits of energy saving in European agriculture by providing
evidence for the economic and ecological side-effects of improved energy efficiency in
agriculture.
 Involving stakeholders in selected countries and presenting the AGREE results to
funding organisations and R&D networks.