Potential of local producing bioenergy/biogas from waste in the municipality of Ragunda

Sammanfattning: Population growth, climate change and increased global energy demand has led to the search for environment friendly energy sources. Ragunda Municipality’s major producers of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions are transport, agriculture, and work machines. This research is motivated by a goal set by Ragunda Municipality to produce 15% of their own energy consumption and wider regional goal of reducing GHG emissions by 10% year on year to towards 2030. The study explores the potential for using bioenergy/biogas and climatic effects of its local production in Ragunda from agriculture, forestry, food, municipal, and sewage waste for one year. The method calculated tonne of waste, energy production in MWh, biogas volumes in Nm3 and climate impact of the bioenergy as carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-eq). The study showed total local bioenergy production from waste materials for Ragunda of 58 092 MWh/year, total biogas production from waste materials for Ragunda of 427 079 Nm3/year. The study also concluded that best use of biogas from a climate impact perspective was to upgrade it to vehicle fuels to offset fossil fuel in the transport sector. The potential for local production of bioenergy/biogas in Ragunda was shown to be financially feasible provided investment aid and subsidies are granted in the case of biogas production.