“This is about how we use all the benefits of a resource-efficient, sustainable economy and at the same time take advantage of renewable biological resources and competitive agriculture” says Mats Eklund, Professor and Director of the Biogas Solutions Research Centre (BSRC) at Linköping University.
“But it is also about sustainable cities and regions, and their waste systems” he adds.
Every year, BSRC organises a study trip to various facilities connected to biogas and energy. Participants are researchers and representatives from industry. This year’s trip went to southern Sweden, with visits in Småland, Skåne and Halland.
The group visited both small and large plants producing biogas, in urban areas and in the countryside.
“One of the major challenges is how we connect cities and rural areas in this. That link needs to be strengthened. There are synergies we really must take advantage of. But the big increase in production probably should not happen in cities,” says Mats Eklund.
Growing investments
Several actors in the biogas sector are investing in increasingly large rural plants based on manure, which is also one of the products left after biogas extraction.
“In the future, most biogas should also be produced in rural areas, where several players are now investing. Food waste should ideally be transported there to be processed into biogas. That way, we close the nutrient loops between urban and rural areas in a circular system.”
Not just technology
The so-called Nordic biogas model has been widely developed within the waste sector. It also includes wastewater. But technology alone does not determine whether biogas solutions will be adopted.
We focus on
societal conditions
“What makes BSRC special is that we look at societal conditions such as politics, decision-making, financing, markets and broader social issues. At the same time, we are interested in the production system for biogas solutions, biofertiliser and future products. We often say we work on everything from molecular microbiology to political science!”
Decision-makers
BSRC’s co-founder, Associate Professor Jonas Ammenberg, is Sweden’s representative in the International Energy Agency, Task 37. He recently compiled a report listing 53 different societal impacts on sustainability stemming from biogas solutions – most of them positive for society and the entire economy.
The report notes that decision-makers often find it difficult to see the overall economic impact and the link between sanitation, waste management, water treatment and biogas as an energy source.
“Biogas stands out in many ways among different types of fuels. There are very few conflicting interests compared with other energy production we know of. Biogas solutions can bring enormous benefits. But now we need to get the message out,” says Mats Eklund.
He also points out that the biogas system is extremely sensitive to decisions taken at political level or within different sectors.
Cross-sector approach
“Imagine you work in transport, industry, agriculture, wastewater – anything. There will always be something that is not optimised. Something will always fail somewhere in the system because it spans so many parts of society,” says Mats Eklund, adding:
“This illustrates the need to stop seeing society as divided into silos. We need a cross-sector approach to solutions.”
The world needs to know
He returns to the need to communicate biogas solutions to the wider world:
“We have talked a lot about sustainable cities and regions as one track, and resource-efficient bioeconomy as another. In the future, we need to develop the identity and narrative around the European biogas model, which actually brings all this together. That is one of our challenges for the next five years,” says Mats Eklund.
