On Thursday, April 18, 2024, Energetika Marketing organized a Seminar on the possibilities of applying renewable energy sources, Biomass & Biogas 2024, which was an opportunity for researchers from EIHP, Mihaela Grubišić Šeba and Marin Miletić, to give a presentation on the economic aspect of development biogas plants.
The development of biogas plants is closely related to state subsidies, which aimed to encourage and direct investors, in this case farmers, to produce electricity from renewable sources. This had positive consequences associated with the rapid development of the biogas sector and rather negative ones - the redirection of corn and fodder production with the sole purpose of utilization in digesters. However, due to the rise in the prices of agricultural raw materials (primarily silage), the drop in electricity prices and the tendency for agricultural raw materials to be predominantly used in the nutrition of people and livestock, it has become questionable how justified it is to encourage the production of biogas based on the use of silage with public money because it resulted in a negative impact on the agricultural market (increase in land and silage prices, reduction of areas for crops used for food purposes, etc.).
Starting from European experiences and the problems faced by the biogas sector in Croatia, the development of biogas plants should be viewed from a financial and economic perspective in the context of fulfilling the goals of the circular economy. Constantly dependent on livestock and available silage in a limited radius from the plant, biogas plants are an indirect incentive for the development of livestock and respect for crop rotation in agriculture.
Read more about the event: https://www.energetika-net.com/obnovljivi-izvori/bioplin-vise-nije-nezeljeno-dijete
