From policy assessment to replication analysis: how REGATRACE contributed to shaping INSPIRE™‘s multidimensionality.
Challenge
REGATRACE, funded under Horizon 2020, aimed to accelerate the development of a European biomethane market by supporting Member States in aligning their national frameworks, establishing certification schemes, and setting up registries to enable cross-border biomethane trade.
ISINNOVA’s main task was to analyse existing national policies and support schemes for biomethane, aiming to provide a comprehensive assessment of their performance and effectiveness.
Yet, during the early stages of the project, ISINNOVA saw an opportunity: rather than analysing policies in isolation, why not explore their potential to inspire other countries?
At that time, ISINNOVA had been experimenting with an early methodology for assessing the replicability of smart city solutions within the urban context, notably within the RUGGEDISED project. However, applying such approach directly to national-level policies proved unfeasible.
The challenge was significant: how could a methodology originally designed for evaluating the transferability of urban innovation be adapted to assess the replicability of complex, multi-dimensional policy frameworks?
Despite these uncertainties, ISINNOVA decided to take on the challenge and began reshaping the methodological approach to suit REGATRACE’s context.
Our Approach
The adapted methodology was applied to analyse seven European countries with diverse levels of biomethane development, policy frameworks, and market readiness.
A total of 19 policies supporting biomethane production, distribution, and market development were assessed.
ISINNOVA worked closely with project partners to collect and interpret both quantitative and qualitative data across five key dimensions: market conditions, ecosystem maturity and governance structures, policy efficiency and effectiveness, implementation timelines, and potential side-effects and unintended consequences.
Rather than delivering prescriptive replication plans, the approach aimed at enriching the understanding of what features make a policy replicable and under which circumstances it could effectively inspire other national contexts to adapt and adopt it.
This analytical effort primarily served as a learning process for ISINNOVA itself, providing valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities linked to policy replication within the biomethane sector.
Lessons learned on biomethane policy replication
The application of the early INSPIRE™ framework within REGATRACE revealed that replication is rarely about transferring policies as they are, but rather about understanding and adapting to the conditions under which they can succeed.
The assessment showed that highly replicable biomethane policies are not necessarily those with the most ambitious targets or the most advanced mechanisms, but rather those that can be flexibly adapted to the diverse market and governance structures of other countries.
For example, several incentive schemes, certification systems, and support mechanisms developed by the Leader countries — Austria, Germany, and Estonia — showed promising replication potential when analysed against the context of Follower countries such as Ireland, Italy, and Poland.
This was mainly due to their clear regulatory frameworks, the presence of well-established gas markets, and the use of financial support instruments (such as feed-in tariffs and investment grants) that could be realistically adapted without requiring major institutional reforms.
Conversely, at the time of the project, policies relying on complex market-based instruments, such as quota systems or advanced certificate trading mechanisms, were found to be less easily transferable when assessed against the local conditions of countries like Lithuania or Spain, where:
- the biomethane market was still underdeveloped,
- regulatory responsibilities were fragmented across multiple authorities,
- institutional capacities to implement and monitor sophisticated schemes were limited,
- and national registries and certification infrastructures were either absent or in an early stage of development, calling for significant preliminary efforts and investments.
INSPIRE™’s Evolution: from REGATRACE to a flexible replication framework
A preliminary analysis of national biomethane policies in REGATRACE provided the perfect opportunity for ISINNOVA to push its in-house early framework beyond the urban context developed for RUGGEDISED, adapting it to assess national-level policies and strategies in relation to other local contexts.
Through this opportunity, ISINNOVA shaped what would later become INSPIRE™, testing its flexibility and discovering its true potential:
- the ability to adapt to different contexts (urban, national, policy-oriented, or technical),
- the possibility to tailor dimensions and indicators according to the topic at stake,
- and the capacity to systematically identify the key factors that enable or limit replication.
REGATRACE, together with the work conducted in parallel on RUGGEDISED, became a cornerstone in building the methodological and conceptual foundations of INSPIRE™.
“REGATRACE challenged us to rethink everything we knew about replication. It was the perfect opportunity to test the flexibility of our approach, and it became one of the most important steps in shaping what INSPIRE™ is today.”
– Loriana Paolucci, Creator of INSPIRE™
Are you working on policies or strategies where informed replication could make the difference?
ISINNOVA can help you structure your assessment and gain valuable insights to guide your next steps.
Loriana Paolucci – INSPIRE™ Research & Development
lpaolucci@isinnova.org
Stefano Proietti – INSPIRE™ Marketing & Promotion
sproietti@isinnova.org
The REGATRACE Team
European Biogas Association (EBA), AIB – Association of Issuing Bodies, European Renewable Gas Registry ( ERGaR), AGCS, Consorzio Italiano Biogas (CIB), DENA, Romanian Association of Biomass and Biogas (ARBIO), Renewable Gas Forum Ireland (RGFI), Fluxys, DBFZ , AMBER, NEDGIA, ELERING, UPEBI.