Territorial governance and actors’ coordination in a local project of anaerobic digestion. A social network analysis

ABSTRACT

Biogas is a process for producing renewable energy, which has recently gained interest in contributing to a territorial strategy for the deployment of the circular economy. The projects, which are collective in nature, bring together multiple actors or local stakeholders from a wide variety of backgrounds. The article proposes to analyze the territorial governance of this type of project by studying the relations of synergy and cooperation between stakeholders in the case study of the Syndicat Mixte du Point Fort (SMPF) of Cavigny (France). The results of the analysis of interaction and coordination networks show that local stakeholders develop dense relational networks that vary throughout the project. This high density is indicative of the importance of group cohesion in interactions, which is necessary to create a framework of trust and consultation that favours the success of territorial renewable energy projects. The measure of centrality of the interacting actors shows that the project leader (SMPF) plays the role of assembler and facilitator of the interaction networks facilitating the sharing of flows, knowledge, and collective learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Anaerobic digestion
• biogas
• territorial governance
• social network analysis
• innovation

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Syndicat Mixte du Point Fort (SMPF) and the people and structures that agreed to collaborate to this research. Our warmest thanks go to Emma BOURSAULT for conducting the interviews and collecting the data that made this work possible. This research has been funded by ADEME and PSDR programmes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Let us note that cooperation can be defined as a specific kind of coordination.

2 A syndicat mixte is a type of inter-municipal cooperation structure to enable local authorities to join forces with each other or with public institutions.

3 A cohesive subgroup is a subset of actors who are more connected to each other than to the rest of the network, whereby an actor can participate in several cohesive subgroups at the same time. They can be identified in terms of the number of subgroups (n-clicks, with n = 2) (Borgatti, 2002).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l’Energie: [Grant Number GRANT]; PSDR.