The project “Global dissemination of the Nordic model for biogas solutions”, referred to as IP4, aimed to create a decision-making guide for companies, municipalities, and researchers interested in internationalization of biogas solutions and create a platform for dialogue and sharing experiences. The project was operationalized through workshops, presentations by companies and researchers, focusing on the adaptability and sustainability of the Nordic Biogas Model (NBM) in international contexts. Three themes have been in focus and learning outcomes are summarized under each theme.

Theme1: Conditions for successful adaptation of NBM

Successful adaptation of the NBM internationally depends on context-specific factors, shaped by the local needs and socioeconomic conditions of the target country. The adaptation process is typically stepwise and gradual, with progress occurring incrementally in areas like policy, regulation, and technological advancement. It is also a reciprocal process, where mutual learning between providers and adopters is critical, supported by early-stage assessments to determine adopter readiness and key preconditions.

Theme2: Sustainability implications of adapting NBM

The NBM presents significant sustainability benefits through multi-valorisation, enabling value creation from biogas production, nutrient recycling, and system synergies such as industrial and urban symbiosis. However, the realization of these benefits depends on the local context, including effective policies and regulatory incentives (e.g., policies that discourage landfilling, or promote waste valorisation).

Theme3: Lessons from international adaptation of NBM

International experiences on adaptation of biogas solutions highlight that systems that fit and confirm to existing practices (e.g., landfilling organic waste with gas capture), offer some benefits with minimal changes in the sociotechnical system. In contrast, more systemic adaptations that are closer to NBM, provide broader and more lasting benefits that take time and requires structural adjustments.

In summary, considering Themes 1–3, the successful adoption of the NBM in international markets requires a strategic and context-specific approach. It is crucial to clearly communicate the diverse sustainability benefits of the NBM early in the process, preventing a narrow focus on short-term gains. Also, technology providers need to adopt a systematic approach for assessing risks and opportunities at the early stages, considering the context-specific and diverse nature of international markets. Both adopters and providers should recognize that adapting the NBM involves navigating a complex landscape with coordination among stakeholders across sectors, each with its own regulations and market conditions. Thus, it is a gradual and time-consuming process.

Sport is more than just a game—it's a global phenomenon that shapes cultures, economies, and communities. Football, the world's most popular sport, is a prime example. Yet beneath the surface lies an overlooked environmental cost. As the climate crisis accelerates, the sprawling network of football facilities—stadiums, training grounds, and infrastructure—emerges as a silent contributor to environmental degradation and the transgression of planetary boundaries. Two common types of fields exist: artificial and natural turf. Research on environmental impacts of these turfs remains limited, especially in cold climates. This study presents a life cycle assessment of 1 m2 artificial and natural football turfs in Nordic climates, evaluating their environmental impacts such as global warming potential, eutrophication potential and ecotoxicity potential across construction, use, maintenance, and end-of-life phases over operational lifespans of 10, 20 and 30 years. Natural turf exhibited the highest overall environmental impacts over the operational lifespan, e.g. the global warming potential was 30.6 kg CO2 eq/m2 while the artificial turf reached 15.6 kg CO2 eq/m2. During the construction phase, artificial turf generated significant emissions, mainly from material production. In the use phase, natural turf showed the greatest impacts due to diesel consumption and fertilizer application. At the end-of-life stage, artificial turf's sand and infill were reused, while the turf carpet and shock pad were incinerated for energy recovery. However, without recycling, artificial turf would represent the highest environmental burden among the evaluated alternatives. Implementing effective recycling and energy recovery strategies is essential to mitigate its environmental impact. Furthermore, sourcing turf materials locally, combined with substituting conventional maintenance equipment with electric robotic alternatives, can further reduce overall environmental impacts.

Global waste management challenges demand innovative and multi-functional solutions. The Nordic Biogas Model (NBM) based on anaerobic digestion of organic waste and valorization of its outputs provides several benefits beyond waste treatment such as energy recovery, nutrient recycling and climate impact mitigation. Despite these benefits, its international adoption remains limited, revealing an implementation gap. One way to address this gap is to adapt technology and knowledge from the provider to each specific context. This involves the embedding of the technology into the local context and the development of conditions such as formal and informal institutions over time. Based on decade-long interactions with Nordic companies and municipal decision-makers, we highlight the importance of communication between the technology provider and potential adopter, to ensure that the diverse sustainability benefits of NBM are acknowledged. Furthermore, most provider companies can benefit from a systematic guideline that supports early-stage decision-making as an essential component of the adaptation and implementation of the NBM in diverse international contexts. In this article, we offer suggestions for both: (1) how to better communicate the sustainability benefits of the NBM, and (2) how to assess the risk and opportunities of entering new markets at the early stages of decision-making.

I denna studie undersöktes potentialen för etableringen av nya biogassystem inom ett geografiskt område som utgjordes av Region Sörmlands kommuner samt kommunerna Södertälje, Nykvarn, Norrköping och Söderköping. Anledningen till studien är det studerade områdets förhållandevis låga nuvarande biogasproduktion samt den stora potentiella efterfrågan på biogas i området, då SSAB i framtiden kommer behöva biogas till sin fossil-fria stålbearbetning. I studien studerades den tekniska och administrativa potentialen, det vill säga vad som är möjligt att producera under dagens administrativa villkor samt med dagens (och en nära framtids) teknik. Potentialen undersöktes utifrån fyra olika potentialer: rötbar biomassapotential, biogaspotential, koldioxidproduktionspotential och näringscirkulationspotential. Resultatet visar på en biogaspotential mellan 380 och 540 GWh per år vilket skulle motsvara en stor ökning från dagens produktion på mellan 50 och 60 GWh per år. Ytterligare 100 GWh per år skulle kunna produceras av koldioxiden genom biometanisering men då krävs stora mängder vätgas. Angående näringscirkulationspotentialen så kan biogödseln (som samproduceras med biogas i biogasanläggningar) uppfylla cirka tre fjärdedelar av kvävebehovet, nära hela fosforbehovet och fyra gånger kaliumbehovet i det studerade områdets jordbruk. Det studerade området delades upp i fem produktionsområden för att öka upplösningen i studien. Dessa områden valdes för att de skulle kunna utgöra delområden som är stora nog för att etablera biogasanläggning av den storlek som krävs för att förvätska biogasen och samtidigt undvika alltför långa transportsträckor för substrattransporter. Detta svarar upp mot trenden att etablera större och större biogasanläggningar samt ett ökat fokus på förvätskad biogas. Dock kan mindre anläggningar vara nödvändiga för att uppnå vissa delar av potentialen i områden med små, men betydelsefulla, substratmängder. Det produktionsområde med störst potential var Söderköping/Norrköping men det betyder nödvändigtvis inte att det är det mest lovande produktionsområdet att börja mer fokuserade implementeringsstudier i då andra faktorer så som lönsamhet inte undersökts i denna studie. Fortsatta studier bör fokusera på hur lantbruksrelaterade substrat kan användas inom biogasproduktion. Här kan studier fokusera på olika områden, exempelvis hur biogasanläggningar kan drivas stabilt på enbart grönmassa (till exempel vall och mellangrödor) och hur ökad odling för biogasproduktion påverkar mat- och foderproduktion, individuella lantbrukare samt åkermarkens långsiktiga hälsa. Dessutom behövs implementeringsstudier för att realisera potentialen, dessa bör fokusera på att undersöka specifika etableringsmöjligheter utifrån ekonomiska, tekniska, logistiska och administrativa perspektiv.

Biogas solutions in the Nordics is undergoing rapid developments and the demand for biogas is ever increasing because of the Russian war on Ukraine and the transition to fossil free industry and transportation. Furthermore, with the introduction of several multi-national companies into the biogas sector in the Nordics and with more and more biomethane being traded across national borders, it becomes increasingly important to view biogas solutions in the Nordics as a whole and to go beyond the confines of each individual nation. Since the transition and the current energy crisis require a quick response, understanding what could be done with current technologies and established substrates is important to guide decision-making in the short-term. This study aims to do just that by presenting the current biogas potential for the Nordics, including Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. The potential was estimated for eight categories: food waste, manure, food industry waste, sludge from wastewater treatment, landscaping waste, straw, agricultural residues, and crops with negligible indirect land use effects (such as ley crops and intermediary crops). Two categories were excluded due to a lack of appropriate estimation procedures and time to develop such procedures, and these were marine substrates and forest industry waste. Furthermore, several categories are somewhat incomplete due to lack of data on the availability of substrates and their biogas characteristics. These include, for example, crops grown on Ecological focus areas, excess ley silage, damaged crops, and certain types of food industries. The specifics of each category is further detailed in Section 2 of the report.

In the report, the biogas potential includes the biomethane potential, the nutrient potential, and the carbon dioxide production potential, capturing all outputs of a biogas plant. The results of the potential study show that the current biomethane potential for the Nordics is about 39 TWh (140 PJ) per year when considering the included biomass categories in the short-term perspective. In relation to current production, realizing this potential would mean a roughly fourfold increase in yearly production, meaning that a significant unexploited potential remains. On the nutrient side, the biogas system in the Nordics would, given the realization of the estimated potential, be of roughly the same size as current mineral fertilizer use (about 75 percent for nitrogen and 160 percent for phosphorous). While this represents the management of a significant portion of nutrients used in agriculture, the potential to replace or reduce mineral fertilizer use through biogas expansion remains unexplored in this study since a significant portion of nutrients come from biomass that is already used as fertilizer (e.g., manure). Finally, on the carbon dioxide side, about 4.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide would be produced, which could be either captured and stored or captured and utilized, thereby further increasing the positive environmental effects associated with biogas solutions. In conclusion, there remains a large unexploited biogas potential in the Nordics, even when only considering current technologies and established feedstock that could be realized in the short-term (the theoretical potential is much larger since many substrate categories are excluded and the potential is limited to established technologies). Such a realization would bring large increases to biomethane production but would also mean that a significant amount of nutrients would be recirculated through the biogas system. This means that the biogas system has a key role to play in increasing both the food and energy security in the Nordic countries, in addition to its many positive environmental effects.

Biogas production through anaerobic digestion is an integral part of the transition toward a biobased and circular economy and its expansion is foreseen in many parts of the world as well as in Europe. In Sweden, a governmental inquiry suggested biogas production to be increased from about 2 TWh today to 7 TWh by 2030. This rapid expansion would require installation of several new biogas plants across the country. However, the location of biogas plants can greatly affect its business performance and there are several geographic and socio-political factors that would limit the choice of location. Through dialogue with existing biogas producing companies and a few other related actors, we identified 12 factors that are commonly considered in the site-selection of biogas plants in Sweden or are considered to be important in the years to come. These factors are grouped into those related to supply and demand (feedstock supply, biogas demand, digestate demand, and carbon dioxide demand), infrastructure and synergies (available infrastructure, adjacent existing industries), land-use and zoning (nearby housing, zoning, and historic preservation sites), and socio-political context (political strategies and goals, organizational capability, and local social acceptance). We discuss how these factors can be used under rapidly transforming conditions in Sweden through different site-selection logics and highlight the importance of spatially explicit analysis for individual or coordinated decision making in future. Our method of enquiry and analysis, and to a certain degree the factors, can be also relevant for other countries, particularly in Europe. This study paves the way for more in-depth investigation of the question of site-selection of biogas plants in Sweden; both in the direction of detailed analysis at the local level, or screening analysis on the regional or national level for improved coordinated actions.

In this paper, we performed technology assessment and systems analysis of primary digestate processing techniques to provide a comprehensive analysis of their environmental and cost performance. We compiled more than 100 observations from large-scale biogas plants and considered digestate based on manure, crops and agro-wastes, and food waste under the geographical contexts of Sweden and Belgium. Centrifuge, screw press, and rotary drum were identified as suitable primary processing techniques. We analyzed the climate impact, energy use, and operational cost of digestate management under these scenarios: no processing, partial processing (solid-liquid separation) and full processing (solid-liquid separation followed by ammonia stripping). As expected, the suitable digestate processing varied with the context, transport was often the most critical cost factor, and emissions from storage reduced the climate savings from the use of biofertilizers. However, treating liquid fraction became a main contributor to cost and climate impact under the Belgian conditions. Consequently, the possibility for local application of liquid fraction as biofertilizer could prevent costs and impacts associated with its further treatment. The main novelty of this work is in its integrative and comprehensive approach toward the choices and impacts of primary processing of digestate. We tried to bridge many individual case studies, drew from experiences of biogas plants in different geographical contexts, assessed suitable processing techniques for different digestate types, and analyzed the environmental impacts and cost of digestate management from a life cycle perspective. We believe that such integrated approaches would help decision-making for increased sustainability of the biogas sector. 

The depletion of natural resources, climate change and energy security are some of today's societal challenges. One way to address these is through anaerobic digestion of food waste, which provides multiple benefits such as waste treatment, nutrient recycling and renewable energy, such as biogas. Biogas solutions tend to vary, so to gain a holistic understanding of their pros and cons there is a need to use a common analytical approach and simultaneously consider several issues. This study has analysed the climate impact, primary energy use, nutrient recycling potential, and resource cost of producing biogas from food waste in three Swedish biogas plants with different setups. In addition, several scenarios representing changes in the existing systems were analysed. The study aims to provide insights into factors that affect the performance of biogas production from food waste. The method applied is based on life cycle analysis and key performance indicators (KPIs), which were used to compare and analyse the performance of the biogas systems. The analysis synthesises a large amount of information about the performance of these systems and their sub-systems. Despite significant differences between the studied cases, all led to the production of biomethane with a low climate impact (62–80% less climate impact in grCO2eq/MJ compared with the fossil reference), low non-renewable primary energy use (16–31% MJ per MJ delivered biomethane), and significant nutrient recovery (e.g., 52–86% of phosphorus content of food waste was delivered as biofertilizer). In addition to the collection system, the efficiency of pretreatment, the choice of energy system (e.g., for heating the biogas plant), and a suitable digestate treatment were found to be among the main factors that influence the overall performance of these systems.

The transition toward a circular and biobased economy requires the biorefineries and bio-based industries to become more resource efficient with regards to their waste and by-product management. Organic by-products and waste streams can be an important source of value if used in feasible pathways that not only have a low environmental impact but also preserve or recover their energy, nutrients, and other potentially valuable components. Through development of a multi-criteria assessment framework and its application on a real case, this article provides methodological and practical insights on decision making for enhanced by-product management. Our framework includes 8 key areas and 18 well-defined indicators for assessing the environmental performance, feasibility, and long-term risk of each alternative. We studied six different management options for the stillage by-product of a Swedish wheat-based biorefinery and our results shows that the most suitable options for this biorefinery are to use the stillage either as animal fodder or as feedstock for local biogas production for vehicle fuel. This multi-criteria approach can be used by bio-based industrial actors to systematically investigate options for by-product management and valorisation for a circular and bio-based economy.