Socioenvironmental impacts of biogas production in a cooperative agroenergy condominium
Introduction
Agroenergy condominiums are collective business arrangements instituted to bring economies of scale and enabling energy production in small and medium-sized rural organizations. Such arrangements have been created in Southern Brazil as experimental endeavors, to promote the harnessing of energy from animal wastes, through the production of biogas.
Many variations exist in concept and terminology used to classify biogas production plants [1]. Collective biogas production arrangements are common, e.g., in Germany, encouraged by government subsidies called ‘feed-in tariff system’ [2]; and especially in Denmark, where implementation of these collective plants were pioneered in the early 1980s [3]. The Danish collective arrangements were also driven by government incentives, technological innovations, and economies of scale in relation to individual plants. Typically, for their organizational structuring, cooperatives were created containing from just five up to 100 rural producers [3], and today these so-called centralized plants account for most of the biogas produced in that country [4].
According to the World Bioenergy Association [5], world biogas production showed an average growth rate of 11.2% from 2000 to 2014, the year in which a volume of 58.7 billion normal cubic meters was reached (Nm³), with the leadership of the European Union (49%), China (25.6%), the United States (14.4%), Thailand (2.2) and India (1.4%). In Brazil, despite the exceptionally large supplies of biomass [[6], [7]], the effective participation of biogas in the energy matrix remains far below the energetic potential. Biomass represents 27% of the Brazilian energy matrix (294 Mtpe), with a predominance of sugarcane (18%, of which 11% is electricity and 7% ethanol), firewood and charcoal (8.7%), and in smaller scale, residual biomass for biogas production (0.0001%) [8]. Fortunately, a recent survey by the International Center for Renewable Energies [9] showed that Brazilian production has grown by remarkable 26.9% yearly between 2010 and 2019, from 0.168 to 1.345 billion Nm3.
A series of public and private actions focused on energy production within the scope of Brazilian agribusiness has been underway, aiming at harnessing the energetic potential of organic agricultural residues, especially animal wastes, for production of biogas in rural family farms. This is because family farming constitutes 77.4% (3.9 million) of agricultural establishments, occupies 23% (80.9 million ha) of the agricultural area, is responsible for 67% (10.1 million people) of occupations in rural areas, 23% of the total value of Brazilian agricultural production (R$ 107 billion), and owns the majority of the poultry (80%), swine (81%) and cattle (76%) in the country [10].
The Southern state of Paraná is one of the main Brazilian producers of animal protein, with the municipality of Marechal Cândido Rondon centering the macro-region with the largest flock of poultry, and the second largest herd of pigs in the country. Besides its high potential for production of biogas from animal wastes, with consequent reduction in GHG emissions, the municipality is located on the margins of Itaipu Hydroelectric Plant reservoir, and has the great challenge of reducing water eutrophication risks.
Nonetheless, there is still some limitations of scale of producing biogas in the context of small rural family farms. In general, small-scale production presents vulnerabilities due to the lack of technical assistance and inadequate handling of biodigesters and usage of biogas, which can result in methane leakage and negative environmental impacts [11]. Such difficulties could well be mitigated by increasing production scale and technological innovations implemented in cooperative agroenergy condominiums.
In the last decade, changes were made in the regulatory framework aimed at both the mitigation of environmental impacts of animal production and the use of waste for the production of biogas and biomethane [12]. In addition, the National Electric Energy Agency regulated the distributed generation of electric energy by associations and cooperatives through the National Interconnected System[[13], [14]].
Once these opportunities and challenges are recognized, field-implemented agroenergy projects must be thoroughly analyzed, aiming at providing information about their environmental, economic, and social impacts [15,16]. Among the wide diversity of existing methods for such socioenvironmental impact studies, each presenting advantages and limitations, Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) are used for various production processes, including biogas [[17], [18], [19]].
However, despite existing adaptations to consider technical vulnerabilities and social concerns [20,21], the insertion of economic and social dimensions into the LCA structure is still at an early stage [22]. In addition to LCA, approaches are available to analyze the economic viability of biomass energy harnessing projects [23,24], but the results are strictly monetary, lacking sufficient social and environmental relevance.
On the other hand, multi-criteria models have been shown to be suitable for assessing the impacts of projects related to the recovery of energy from wastes, by considering the wide diversity of environmental, social, and economic aspects involved [25,26]. Multi-criteria analysis can be appropriately structured, as to respond with flexibility towards the variety of contexts represented by individual family farms within an agroenergy condominium, while also intelligible regarding the social, environmental, and technical complexities of agroenergy production, distribution, and impacts [27]. Also, multi-criteria models are easily adaptable for both the prior (ex-ante) and posterior (ex-post) assessments of technological processes implementation [28], thus contributing towards the planning and decision-making stages of innovation management.
The objective of this research was to assess the socioenvironmental impacts of biogas production by family farmers organized in a cooperative agroenergy condominium, based on the application of a specially designed system of multi-criteria indicators [29], as to critically analyze the organizational and technological challenges of bioenergy production, as well as to propose recommendations for managerial improvements.
Section snippets
Agroenergy condominium
The ‘Agroenergy Condominium for Family Agriculture Ajuricaba’, henceforth named Condominium Ajuricaba (Fig. 1), is located in the municipality of Marechal Cândido Rondon, in Paraná State, Southern Brazil. According to Köppen's classification, the region climate is humid subtropical (Cfa), with 20.1 °C average annual temperature and 1600 to 1800 mm average annual rainfall [30].
Conceived as a pilot project for small-scale biogas production, the agroenergy condominium was initially designed on a
Ecological impacts dimension
In the dimension related to ecological impacts, favorable results were observed for four criteria of the Technology efficiency aspect: (i) use of agricultural inputs and resources; (ii) energy consumption; (iii) self-generation, utilization, reuse and autonomy in the agricultural area and (iv) energy security. Significant results were also obtained for three criteria grouped in the Environmental quality aspect: (v) emissions to the atmosphere; (vi) soil quality, and (vii) water quality (Fig. 4).
Ecological impacts dimension
The objective of this research was to analyze a cooperative model of biogas production implemented as a pilot project to use residual biomass. In addition to improving the disposal of wastes, these alternative business models should be developed with a view to both mitigating the environmental impacts of agricultural wastes, constituting an important strategy to improve access to renewable energy and organic fertilizer in rural family properties. Family farmers can become not only consumers,
Conclusion
Although the implementation of the agroenergy condominium significantly improved the socioenvironmental performances of the cooperating rural establishments, some recommendations for managerial improvements are necessary to the replication of the pilot project. In addition to positive results of replacing LPG, the biogas must be used to produce electricity by net-metering or commercialization in the National Interconnected System. The agroenergy condominiums might be independent energy
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Bruno Henrique Crespo Porto: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing – original draft. João Paulo Guimarães Soares: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Writing- Reviewing and Editing. Geraldo Stachetti Rodrigues: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Writing- Reviewing and Editing. Ana Maria Resende Junqueira: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing- Reviewing and Editing. Armando de Azevedo Caldeira-Pires: Conceptualization, Supervision. Daiana Gotardo Martinez:
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
To the family farmers from Condominium Ajuricaba, the International Center for Renewable Energies (CIBiogás), Embrapa Suínos e Aves, Embrapa Meio Ambiente, the Graduate Degree Program in Agribusiness of the University of Brasília (PROPAGA/UnB) and the Development Coordination to Renewable Energies from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply (MAPA).
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Present address: Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply, Cocoa Research and Innovation Center, Rodovia Ilhéus-Itabuna, km 22, CEP: 45.600-970, Ilhéus, BA, Brazil.