The energy supply in the world needs to change from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives. Biogas is such a renewable alternative, and there is potential to increase the biogas production in the world. In recent decades, many countries have increasingly been upgrading biogas to vehicle fuel. In the last few years, the interest has also increased in liquefying biogas for heavier transports. Biogas can also be a raw material for other fuels by gasifying the biogas, for example Fischer-Tropsch fuels, methanol, dimethyl ether and hydrogen. This study provides an overview of vehicle fuels that can be produced from biogas, their technological maturity and their respective potentials as substitutes for fossil fuels in the transport system. A common factor for all of them is that they are most often produced from fossil fuels. Compressed and liquefied methane are the only fuels being commercially produced using biogas. The other fuels all have strengths that both compressed and liquefied methane lack, for example the possibility of emission-free fuel cell vehicles. However, they are all less mature technologies than compressed and liquefied methane. The greatest short-term potential is thus for expanded use of biogas as compressed and liquefied biomethane.
Contemporary environmental problems require a transition to renewable energy. Biogas is one alternative, which besides being renewable has many other benefits. For further expansion of biogas production, it seems necessary to develop new areas of biogas usage where biogas can replace fossil fuels. This article presents an analysis of the drivers for and barriers to increased biogas usage in three sectors where biogas usage is undeveloped in Sweden: manufacturing, road transport and shipping. Several of the identified drivers and barriers, such as unstable and short-term policies, lack of infrastructure, and contract requirements, have also been found in previous studies even though they may be slightly different depending on the context. A new driver observed in this study is that of intergenerational thinking in family-owned businesses. The study also reiterates the significant influence of policy in the form of subsidies, tax exemptions and regulations on the adoption and use of renewable energy in general and biogas specifically. The results suggest the need for future policymaking to be guided by long-term trajectories, which can be a relevant basis for adopters to make investments into biogas technologies.
Background: This paper gives insight into whether biofuels for road transport can play an important role in a Swedish county in the year 2030, and contributes to knowledge on how to perform similar studies.
Methodology: A resource-focused assessment, including feedstock from the waste sector, agricultural sector, forestry sector and aquatic environments, partially considering technological and economic constraints.
Results: Two scenarios were used indicating that biofuels could cover almost 30 and 50%, respectively, of total energy demand for road transport.
Conclusion: Without compromising food security, this study suggests that it is possible to significantly increase biofuel production, and to do this as an integrated part of existing society, thereby also contributing to positive societal synergies.
The agricultural sector holds great potential for contributing to European biomethane production, but how to best exploit it is still not clear. This study compares three technical solutions for producing liquefied biomethane from manure in Sweden: centralized biogas production and liquefaction, decentralized biogas production and centralized liquefaction, and decentralized biogas production and liquefaction. Technical and practical aspects of the three configurations are assessed through interviews with professionals, and the economic performance is compared through life cycle cost analysis. Depending on the conditions, the most cost-efficient alternative is either a gas pipeline from decentralized biogas production to a centralized liquefaction, or fully centralized production. The economic benefit of centralization increases with the number of farms involved but decreases with the biogas capacity of the system and the transport distance. The pipeline solution provides simple logistics and operation, although concession for pipe laying can be challenging. Moreover, a partly or fully centralized setup improves the delivery security of the system and reduces downtime. However, decentralized biomethane production can be an option for remote farms where centralization is not possible. For existing biogas plants, small-scale liquefaction or a pipeline to centralized liquefaction can be options for developing more biomethane production.
This paper compares and analyzes the relations between the biogas development and the national policy frameworks for biogas solutions in eight European countries. The policy frameworks are compared using a biogas policy model, comprising five dimensions: type of policy; administrative area; administrative level; targeted part of the value chain; and continuity and change over time. The studied countries show examples of both increasing and stagnating biogas production, all of which can be associated with changes in national policy frameworks. Many different policy tools?particularly economic instruments?have proven successful for stimulating biogas production, but changing a well-functioning framework risks impeding the development. Therefore, predictability and relevance for targeted actors are key in policymaking. Targeting specific parts of the value chain can however be required to integrate all the benefits of biogas solutions, such as agricultural methane emissions reduction. Moreover, it can be challenging to design policies and policy instruments that are both effective and sustainable over time, without needs for modifications or adjustments. Finally, biogas policies and policy instruments that are effective in one country would not necessarily lead to the same outcome in another country, as they are dependent on the broader context and policy and economic framework.
Sweden aims to increase biogas production from anaerobic digestion (AD) from 2 to 7 TWh/year until 2030. This paper investigates the requirements, challenges and implications of such a development through qualitative and quantitative assessment of three scenarios. Seven key elements—national policies and policy instruments, regional policies and policy instruments, mobilization of feedstock, infrastructure for feedstock and gas, mobilization of actors, new production facilities, and stable and increasing demand—were defined for the scenario construction and were also used to structure the comparative analysis. Quantitatively, increasing the biogas production from 2 to 7 TWh is estimated to require up to 5 times larger digester volume and up to 12 times more AD plants, meanwhile producing 6 – 8 times more biofertilizers. While a centralized production structure would be more efficient, a decentralized structure with small biogas plants would facilitate the logistics of agricultural substrates and biofertilizers. New production capacity could be incentivized through new and increased production subsidies, as well as an increased demand for renewable energy. Regardless of how the goal is to be achieved, it will require collective efforts from both public and private actors to overcome the many challenges on the way.
In Bangladesh, despite available feedstock for producing biogas, the development of biogas production has been very slow. The objective of this research was to study the drivers for and barriers to biogas technology implementation in the country. As the research involved different types of stakeholders related to biogas production, the outcome provides clarity about the factors influencing the profusion of biogas production in Bangladesh. The outcome of the study identifies poor research and development, lack of coordination among stakeholders, an immature biogas market, lack of awareness and no feed-in tariff policy as the main barriers. In the case of drivers, the motivation of producing biogas as an efficient way of using waste, the availability of local experts, the attractiveness of a growing renewable energy market and the contribution of biogas technology in adaptation to climate change were found to be the most important factors. The study’s outcomes are found to be similar to other studies from developing countries with similar socio-economic status. In accordance with the important drivers and barriers identified in this study, recommendations for increasing the diffusion of biogas in Bangladesh are also presented at the end of the article.
Background: With criticism about the economic viability and environmental performance of biofuels, theuse of byproducts and integration with external industries could be achieved to improve their performanceand provide further use for byproducts and wastes. Methodology: A review of potential byproduct andutility exchanges between biofuel and external industries has been documented in this article through aliterature review and brainstorming workshop, and results have been classified based on their interactions.Results: It has been found that byproduct exchanges, especially those between biofuel industries, andexchanges between the biofuel industries and the food, feed, agriculture and energy industries, offer manypotential exchanges. Conclusion: The identified synergies offer possibilities for potential collaborationpartners in symbiotic exchanges with the biofuel industry.
The diffusion of new socio-technical systems is essential for tackling contemporary sustainability challenges. Against the backdrop of literature on societal embedding this paper explores the diffusion of socio-technical systems as a process of co-constructing innovations and their societal environments. This paper uses a comparative research design to analyze the diffusion of biogas systems across four Brazilian states. In doing so, this paper makes two contributions. First, it contributes with nuances regarding the fit-and-conform and stretch-and-transform typology, showing that innovations exhibit not only hybrid patterns across societal environments but also across different sectors (e.g. agriculture, sanitation, and waste management). Furthermore, innovations exhibit hybrid conform and transform patterns across different administrative levels (e.g. municipal, state, and national). Second, it broadens the empirical base of societal embedding studies to the Global South and biogas technologies which represent a fragmented context and a complex innovation, respectively. Altogether, the paper contributes to further understanding of why multi-functional socio-technical systems, such as biogas systems, diffuse in certain contexts and not in others.