Biogas and high-value feedstocks from agricultural residue streams in Region Västra Götaland

Current work at RISE shows that the digestion of such agricultural residue streams, combined with current production, has the potential to quadruple the region's biogas production, from today's approximately 300 GWh/year to 1200 GWh/year by establishing several plants in the Västra Götaland region.

Furthermore, the use of agricultural residue streams also offers the possibility to produce more high-value product streams such as fatty acids, with the potential to be used as feedstock in, among other things, the chemical industry.

Additionally, pure biogenic carbon dioxide streams arise during the upgrading of biogas, which could potentially be a future raw material in electrochemical processes for the production of additional feedstocks. This can occur at each individual biogas plant, but if a raw gas network is established between several biogas plants, an upgrading facility can serve multiple biogas plants. Thus, the cost-effectiveness and benefits of a biogas platform (i.e., the technical infrastructure and associated systems) from agricultural residue streams can be further strengthened, contributing to both the significant biogas needs on the West Coast as well as the demand for bio-based specialty feedstocks.

Goals

The goal of the project is to demonstrate that biogas:

• produced in the Västra Götaland region (VGR) with agricultural biomass that does not conflict with ILUC (Indirect Land Use Change) according to Olsson et al. (2023), can replace fossil natural gas by approximately 1.2 TWh/year without significantly reducing agricultural production of food raw materials.
• produced in Skåne and Halland with the same setup as for VGR, but with an estimate of manure availability according to Broberg et al. (2022), together can replace fossil natural gas by approximately 1.5 TWh/year.

The goal is also to describe the level of support needed to achieve a methane cost from biogas from VGR agricultural biomass for customers corresponding to 30%, 50%, and 100% higher than that of fossil natural gas in the West Swedish Natural Gas Network, based on a price in the Northwest European natural gas market on April 8th of EUR 27.91 per MWh (Energy Agency, week 15, 2024), which is then adjusted to the customer price on the Swedish market.

Participating parties
RISE, Air Liquide, Brålanda Biogas, Energigas Sverige, Göteborg Energi, Ineos/Inovyn, Innovatum/Biogas Väst, LRF, Nordion Energi, Perstorp, Preem, Skaraborgs kommunalförbund, Stenungsunds kommun and St1

Time period
2024-05-30 – 2025-02-28

Total budget
1 122 200 SEK

Contact the Operational Area Manager