The Economic Analysis of Biogas Plants Regard as Environmental Load: Focused on Swine Manure in Chungju City

Abstract

The substantial climate changes recently observed at all over the world result mainly from the excessive use of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, in the process of industialization during the last 250 years. Agriculture is not only sources, but also sinks of GHGs through removal or sequestration of carbon and methane. There have been many efforts around the world to improve agriculture's ability to sequester GHGs and to seek ways for economic benefits through the emissions reduction project. Specially, biogas plants has been useful to environmental policies in agriculture sector. Biogas plants provide methane by the anaerobic digestion of biomass, both residual as in the case of manure or sewage, municipal waste, by-products from agriculture and energy crops. The objectives of this study were to ex-ante analyze the cost and benefit to the scale of biogas plant facilities using Swine manure in Chungju city and suggest the optimal scale of biogas plants regard as economic feasibility and environmental load. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the economic value of the large scale biogas plants more than the economic value of the small scale plants. So it will be useful, a strategy to raise the economic feasibility of a rural area's biogas plant project should consider to economies of scale.