“In an international market where countries take advantage of all the virtues of biogas, it is necessary to apply a comprehensive vision to understand and exploit all the potential we have.” These are words that he uses in his article, recently published in RETEMA, Xavier Flotats, Honorary Member at AEBIG with the challenge of helping to understand that basing the usefulness of biogas solely on its energy value (because it is a renewable vector) provides a very limited vision and does not sufficiently help its promotion. “It would be like playing billiards with the limitation of only being able to shoot at one side”:
Band one: renewable energy. The guarantees of origin, as conceived in Spain, certify that the energy injected into the gas network in the form of biomethane is renewable, but do not provide information on whether the production and use of this energy has an impact on the reduction of greenhouse gases. greenhouse effect (GHG). Basing the usefulness of biogas solely on its energy value, because it is a renewable vector, provides a very limited vision and does not sufficiently help its promotion.
Band two: producer and manager sector of waste and organic by-products. According to the Spanish greenhouse gas inventory, in 2021 methane emissions due to the management of our slurry and manure, the management of our organic waste and the purification of our wastewater correspond to 20,9 million tons CO2eq/year , with an energy equivalent of 10,3 TWh/year; an energy resource that is lost and also pollutes. We could do much better and adopt anaerobic digestion to avoid emissions of slurry, waste and sludge, optimize methane production to obtain more than what is emitted and also save the emission of the fuel that is replaced.
Band three: processing and use of digestates. In the 2020/21 campaign, Spain consumed around one million tons of nitrogen in the form of nitrogen fertilizers, mostly synthetic, with significant GHG emissions in its production. Undertaking improvement works on farms to have fresh manure available has the advantage of increasing absolute savings per unit of mass transported, and in turn reducing ammonia (NH3) emissions, with health benefits. A biogas and biomethane plant, with its complementary sanitation and nutrient recovery facilities, is not a waste treatment plant, it is a factory for the production of new goods (products) and services (energy) from its own resources.
Fourth band: rural development. I think that those of us, in one way or another, who are related to the world of biogas have assumed that these facilities help create jobs, economic activity and industrialization in rural environments, helping to avoid depopulation. It is necessary to promote dissemination, information, knowledge, dialogue and citizen participation. After all, biogas is not yet part of the country's technological culture.
Full article at:
https://www.retema.es/actualidad/promocion-del-biogas-una-partida-cuatro-bandas
