Abstract
The biogas from waste has emerged as a realistic and reliable renewable energy proposition and can deliver social-economic benefits when integrated with local communities. In the last decade, the biogas sector in European countries has seen unprecedented growth due to favorable policy supports and perceived social-economic benefits. Among different biogas producing schemes, waste to biogas using anaerobic digestion is considered most environment friendly due to minimum carbon leakage and positive waste resource recycling impact. Many countries, including the UK, envision creating a circular economy utilizing Biogas from Waste (BfW) recycling potential. This paper aims to analyze the state of the UK’s BfW scheme through the lens of circular economy and discern areas that need attention to usher BfW potential in supporting a circular economy. The paper also discussed key challenges and barriers to create a local circular economy using the BfW scheme. Based on the analysis, it is observed that the BfW scheme in the UK is currently impeded due to lack cross-sectoral policy coherence, and far from contributing to a circular economy. Additionally, the UK's waste to energy concept is concentrated around incinerator-based systems without much attention on improving resource efficiency and waste recycling. This paper makes three recommendations to improve prospects of the BfW scheme in the UK (1) decentralized approach in the BfW scheme development, (2) considering bio-waste and digestate as value streams, and (3) creating a policy cohesiveness across multiple departments.
Highlights
1.1 BackgroundIn the last decade, biogas has emerged as a strong alternative to fossil-based natural gas
AD process has emerged as the preferred scheme for waste to energy route; the European Union (EU) has integrated the AD process into waste and circular economy policies (Kampman et al, 2017)
This paper aims to analyze the state of the Biogas from Waste (BfW) scheme in the UK through the lens of circular economy and discern areas that need attention to usher BfW potential in supporting a circular economy
Summary
1.1 BackgroundIn the last decade, biogas has emerged as a strong alternative to fossil-based natural gas. European countries provide policy support to integrate biogas into the energy mix with the objectives a) reduce greenhouse gas emission, b) create social-economic benefits for communities, and c) reduce dependency on natural gas imports. Due to sustainability issues associated with landfill waste and energy crops, many countries use liquid sewage and solid waste as the primary feedstock for biogas production (Fagerström et al, 2018). The difficulty in full recovery of produced biogas and methane leakage issues made landfill-based production restricted in many countries (Capodaglio, Callegari, & Lopez, 2016). Anaerobic Digestion (AD) has emerged as an economically viable option since these plants decrease the negative environmental impacts by preventing methane leakage and producing digestate as byproducts used as fertilizer to provide additional income to farmers (Lauer et al, 2018). The BfW facilities based on the AD process are seen as a closed recycle system jsd.ccsenet.org
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