Can Biogas Plants Become a Significant Part of the New Polish Energy Deal? Business Opportunities for Poland’s Biogas Industry

Łukasz Mamica, Monika Mazur-Bubak and Renata Wróbel-Rotter
Additional contact information
Łukasz Mamica: Department of Public Economics, Cracow University of Economics, Rakowicka 27, 31-510 Kraków, Poland
Monika Mazur-Bubak: Department of Public Economics, Cracow University of Economics, Rakowicka 27, 31-510 Kraków, Poland
Renata Wróbel-Rotter: Department of Econometrics and Operational Research, Cracow University of Economics, Rakowicka 27, 31-510 Kraków, Poland

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-14

Abstract: The agricultural biogas sector is now facing the opportunity to become a significant actor in the new energy deal as a low-carbon source of electricity. Given the current prospects for rapid growth in the industry, the authors developed an economic model of a medium-sized agricultural biogas plant to assess the rate of return on such an investment. The analysis comprises energy prices, substrates, and other costs reported by the plants already in operation, as well as the electricity sales support system, the actual biogas and electricity yield from the substrates, and the digestate utilisation. It shows that a biogas plant capable of delivering ca. 2000 MWe generates a profit in a much shorter timeframe than 20 years, even under quite uncertain economic conditions. In the model scenario, the breakeven point is reached at slightly below 5000 MWh of power output or at ca. 5800 MWh including financing costs, with a planned annual output of approx. 8000 MWh. The profitability of the model biogas plant was also demonstrated by calculations made for other scenarios which differ in substrate composition and financing structure. The parameters of the econometric model are based on the data collected from a group of 41 units that use only organic plant matter for biogas production.

Keywords: biogas; green energy; biogas plant (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1614/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1614/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1614-:d:738544

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().