trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

of biogas produced, giving economy of scale and further decrease in production costs. Byintroducing this actor the most crucial actor “Biogas price” becomes fully enrolled into theprogramme and supports it.2. Since the price for biogas can remain on the same level for years, it becomes more attractive forthe customers compared to fossil fuels with their constantly fluctuating price. Moreover there isan actor “Fixed-price contracts for biogas” introduced to offer such contracts to the customers,which increases their commitment to utilise biogas even more.3. The actor “Biogas-driven vehicles price”, which belonged to the antiprogramme, is neutralised,since the competitive price for biogas allows compensating the initial investments into thevehicles.Figure 3 illustrates how the programme-antiprogramme constellation changed over iterations ofanalysis and design of the system. The controversy front line is shifting from iteration to iteration (as inFigure 1), and the size of the circles shows the effect of the actors on the system. It can be seen that bythird iteration the antiprogramme is eliminated by neutralising or re-employing the actors into theprogram. The neutral actors also have less weight, which means in case they become enrolled into theantiprogramme, their effect will not be dramatic. At this stage it is not possible to claim that all thechallenges were already addressed. For example, the challenge of biomass supply for biogas productionmay arise in the future when the demand for the fuel increases. It is planned to map and solve theproblem by further applying the ANT-derived method proposed in this paper.Figure 3.Degree of impact of actors in the programme, antiprogramme and neutral positionthroughout 3 iterations of system development4. Discussion and ConclusionsThe method proposed in this paper can be used for designing sustainable industrial ecosystems, such asthe focal biogas production and transportation system. The benefit of the method lies in the fact that itaddresses the sustainability of the system from a practical perspective: what are the prerequisites forsuch a system to be economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable while being able to “survive”455