Report “Barriers to the implementation of biogas production and bio-waste management solutions”

The biogas market in European countries is at varying levels of development. Despite the benefits of biogas production for the environment, a closed loop economy or energy security, there are still a number of barriers that significantly limit the possibilities for biogas and biomethane market development in Poland and Norway. These barriers can be divided into organisational and legal, technical, economic, environmental, spatial and social.

Strongly linked to the issue of biogas production is also the management of bio-waste. This is because biogas plants enable changes to be made to the management of waste from the food industry and the biodegradable part of municipal waste.

The current insufficient level of selective collection of bio-waste in Poland, as well as the limited possibilities for its processing in the existing installations designed for this purpose, contribute to the still negligible exploitation of its potential. One of the main documents in Poland concerning waste management is the National Waste Management Plan until 2028. Among the targets set in the document for municipal waste, including biodegradable waste, it is indicated, inter alia, to increase organic recycling by promoting composting of bio-waste ‘at source’ by inhabitants, to limit landfilling of bio-waste to a maximum of 35% calculated on the basis of the amount of bio-waste generated in 1995. The document furthermore explicitly mentions the management of bio-waste in biogas plants (including agricultural biogas plants) as one way of dealing with municipal waste, but points to a significant problem of insufficient number and capacity of existing biogas plants for bio-waste management.

Norway has for many years been one of the countries with a very high level of separate waste collection. Norway’s Waste Management Plan 2020-2025 indicates that the national goal is to aim for waste growth to be significantly lower than economic growth and for the resources contained in waste to be used in the best possible way through material recycling and energy use. It also noted the need to introduce and develop good solutions for the collection of bio-waste, both from households and businesses.

Report “Barriers to the implementation of biogas production and bio-waste management solutions” presents a set of identified barriers facing investments in municipal biogas plants (and biomethane plants) and the bio-waste management system in Poland and Norway. Identifying the problems is the first step in seeking and developing appropriate solutions to reduce or remove them altogether.