Assessment of impact on biogas producers of proposed changes to sustainability criteria

Highlights

The impacts of tightening sustainability criteria on biogas and biomethane producers
Including changing GHG limits and underlying assumptions
Cost/benefits
Key drivers to influence bioenergy industry towards low cost carbon abatement

Reasons to buy

For investors and developers to learn how potential policy changes could affect their operations
For policy makers to understand changing sustainability criteria could have on industry and bioenergy deployment
See NNFCC's biomethane calculator use in action to calculate GHG emissions from several supply chains

Number of pages: 24

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Summary

Sustainability criteria were introduced in the RHI in October 2015 and were being considered for the FIT Scheme. The Department for Energy and Climate Change DECC (now BEIS) was considering aligning the criteria across schemes. They were trying to understand, in the interests of achieving maximum value for money and decarbonisation at least cost, what the impact on biogas and biomethane producers would be if the GHG limit were tightened or the underlying assumptions changed. DECC wished to understand:

What the impacts are of applying alternative fossil-fuel comparators for biomethane and biogas combustion
What the impacts are of applying alternative end-use efficiency assumptions for biomethane and biogas combustion
The costs/benefits of harmonising the lifecycle GHG emissions limit between schemes
The extent to which farm AD plants are resilient to fluctuations in crop yield
The key factors which could drive industry behaviour towards lowest carbon abatement costs

NNFCC first established a range of potential GHG thresholds for the modelling. Then we established a set of default supply chains for injection of biomethane, export of electricity and heat, export of electricity only and export of heat only in our ‘Anaerobic Digestion Carbon Calculator’.

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