Agricultural biogas plants as a hub to foster circular economy and bioenergy: An assessment using substance and energy flow analysis

Abstract

Today's agro-food system is typically based on linear fluxes (e.g., mineral fertilizers importation) when a circular approach should be privileged. The production of biogas as a renewable energy source and digestate as an organic fertilizer is essential for the circular economy in agriculture. This study investigates the current utilization of biomass in agricultural anaerobic digestion plants in Switzerland in terms of mass, nutrients, and energy flows to assess its contribution to the circular economy and climate change mitigation through the substitution of mineral fertilizers and fossil fuels. We quantify the system and its benefits in detail and examine potential future developments using different scenarios. Today, agricultural anaerobic digestion provides 1300 TJ/a of biogas. Our results demonstrate that the system could be largely expanded and provide ten times more biogas by 2050 while saving significant mineral fertilizer amounts (over 10 kt/a of dry mass nutrients yielding 38 kt/a of CO2 equivalent).