Abstract
Marginal farm land is land characterised by low food, feed and fodder crop productivity due to soil and environmental limitations. Such land may however be utilised for bio-energy crop production. We investigate the economic viability of small scale combined heat and power anaerobic digestion (CHP AD) projects based on feedstock from farm waste and bio-energy crops grown on a representative temperate latitude marginal farm land in the UK. Using a realistic set of five project feedstock-mix scenarios, and considering standard technology and current market and policy regimes, we deploy a stochastic framework to assess prices of electricity required for these projects to break-even and conduct sensitivity analyses of key project parameters. Accounting for the current market prices and policy tariffs for heat, we find that critical electricity sale prices of about 17.46 p/kWh to 27.12 p/kWh are needed for the projects to break even. These prices are well above the current combined feed-in-tariff support and market prices for electricity over the past years in the UK. We conclude that the use of marginal land to generate power for export using small-scale CHP AD in the UK and the wider temperate latitude countries is unviable, if energy and farming policy regimes do not provide substantial support.
Highlights
On-farm bio-energy generation using farm resources such as manure and feed residues can be complementary to food, feed and fodder crop production
Resulting competition with food production and poor greenhouse gas balances are of great concern [1,2,3,4,5] and typically seen as lessened when bio-energy crops are rather grown on ‘marginal land’ [4,6], which is defined as land characterised by low food, feed and fodder crop productivity due to soil, climatic, or environmental limitations [6,7,8]
There is an ongoing debate about the suitability of bio-energy crops grown on marginal land for transport and more generally [9,12,13,14], less work has been done on the potential of marginal land for generating electricity and/or heat, much of it taking a regional approach with specific feedstock [7,15,16]
Summary
On-farm bio-energy generation using farm resources such as manure and feed residues can be complementary to food, feed and fodder crop production. Resulting competition with food production and poor greenhouse gas balances are of great concern [1,2,3,4,5] and typically seen as lessened when bio-energy crops are rather grown on ‘marginal land’ [4,6], which is defined as land characterised by low food, feed and fodder crop productivity due to soil, climatic, or environmental limitations (e.g., low soil nutrient content, susceptibility to erosion, steep slope, or poor drainage) [6,7,8]. In light of climate change mitigation efforts, bio-energy generation on marginal land has received renewed interest [9,10,11]. Marginality of food, feed and fodder crop production can be affected by farm subsidies and agricultural prices.
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