The impact of renewable energy policies on the adoption of anaerobic digesters with farm-fed wastes in Great Britain

Abstract

This paper explores the effects of the feed-in tariff (FiT) and renewable heat incentive (RHI) schemes on the adoption of anaerobic digesters (AD), and the potential energy generation from farm-fed wastes in Great Britain. This paper adopts a linear programming model, developed in the International Energy Agency (IEA) TIMES platform, aiming to quantify the degree of adoption of AD and the type of energy generation technologies that can be driven by digester biogas to reduce farm energy costs. The results show that the adoption of AD is cost-beneficial for all farms, but different rates of the FiT and RHI schemes will influence the competitiveness between the implementation of combined heat and power (CHP) systems and the utilisation of biogas to only generate heat. The choice of technology is further dependent on the electricity/heat use ratio of the farms and the energy content of the feedstock. The results show that pig farms will more readily adopt CHP, because of its relatively higher electricity-to-heat use ratio, compared to other types of farms, which will favour biogas boilers.