10 Ways to Make Money from Biogas Plants

The anaerobic digestion process provides at least 10 ways to make money from Biogas Plant, that's why it is such an amazing asset to the owners and operators of biogas plants. Once a farmer, for example, gets his or her own biogas plant up and running they soon realise that a digester is so much more than just a producer of renewable energy.

There is a great danger that in this age of decarbonisation progress, the humble AD process is being overlooked by many who seek to reduce their carbon footprint, and that it fails to get the publicity it deserves.

That's why we compiled a list of them, published the video provided below, and wrote this article.

 

Each of the following different income streams provided below, can contribute to the economics of individual digester projects, including farm digesters.

Some income methods apply to all digester installations, while others are a matter of choice, or determined by the size or location, of the farm. Some may not be possible for certain waste types, and as this list is for the United Kingdom, some of these income streams may not be available in your country. The ways in which financial benefit is possible, fall essentially into two categories.

Income Created from the By-products of Anaerobic Digestion

First, there are the savings or direct income created by the by-products, including:
1) savings, on the cost of artificial fertilisers for the farm itself, when a farm uses its own digestate as a fertiliser on their own land
2) sales of digested materials, for use as fertiliser, by other nearby farms
3) sale of fibre or finished compost, either through a regional marketing organisation, or by distribution locally
4) savings in on-farm energy costs, through the use of gas for heating and cooking
5) the sale of electricity, or biogas, either locally or through the national grids, and
6) the sale of spare heat, from CHP units for use in heating buildings or greenhouses, for example.

Income Created from Payments and Subsidies for Reducing Environmental Problems

Second, there are payments and subsidies, of one kind or another, for reducing environmental problems which affect the whole community. These payments could include:
1) gate fees for processing other organic wastes, such as source-separated domestic food waste or garden waste or possibly sludge from small sewage works
2) incentives for producing renewable energy, either through the Renewable Heat Initiative or Feed-in-Tariffs, (also known as FiTs), for electricity generation, and
3) payments for overall reductions in greenhouse gas emissions
4) sometimes there may even be payments made by governments to encourage farmers to use anaerobic digestion as a way to reduce the burden of farmyard contamination on local watercourses, in areas of intensive dairy farming.

Anaerobic Digestion Cleans Up Bathing Beaches

In the early 2000s there were even AD project grants given to some farmers close to bathing beaches in Scotland’s Solway Firth, so that biogas plants were built in an area where dairy farmyard, summer storm-water slurry run-off, was jeopardising the tourist industry.
 On those local beaches, EU bathing beach water quality in the period after after heavy summer storms, was significantly improved, by installing anaerobic digestion plants. 

Our conclusion is that: 

Establishing effective ways of using all the by-products of a biogas plant, and marketing them in the best manner for maximised income, can raise the income from biogas plants substantially.

A number of forms of government funding (subsidies) are available to help ensure a robust economic viability for not only farm biogas plants, but also community biogas projects, and municipal waste-collection authority involvement in the industry.

Governments have been subsidising biogas production, but generally they need to focus the provision of this money more directly on the environmental benefits of each AD Facility.

By doing that, the contribution of public funds can be best used, to help encourage use of the biogas process in ways which meet the needs of small, as well as larger farms.

In particular, it is important to bring together as many as possible of these income streams, for each anaerobic digestion plant.

Good News for Anaerobic Digestion

The good news is that, if this is done, many more farmers, on many more farms, should be able to find it possible to profitably install many more biogas digesters.

Thank you for watching our video presentation (above), and reading this article, we hope you found it useful. You may like to also watch our video on how to raise biogas yield, as another way to improve the income from existing anaerobic digestion plants. via Anaerobic-digestion.com/make-money-from-farm-biogas-plants/