Effects of changes in Italian bioenergy promotion schemes for agricultural biogas projects: Insights from a regional optimization model

Abstract

Effects of changes in Italian bioenergy promotion schemes for agricultural biogas projects: Insights from a regional optimization model / Chinese, D.; Patrizio, P. .; Nardin G.. -In: ENERGY POLICY. -ISSN 0301-4215. -75(2014), pp. 189-205. OriginalEffects of changes in Italian bioenergy promotion schemes for agricultural biogas projects: Insights from a regional optimization model The institutional repository of the University of Udine (http://air.uniud.it) is provided by ARIC services. The aim is to enable open access to all the world. Availability:This is the peer reviewd version of the followng article:

The impact of different energy policy options on feedstock price and land demand for maize silage: The case of biogas in Lombardy

“…Such "sideeffects" call for a comprehensive assessment of all these inter-linked markets. In order to carry out an integrated assessment of agricultural and bioenergy sector accounting for alternative policy scenarios, several interdisciplinary approaches have been developed by combining micro-economic and multi-criteria methodology (Delzeit et al, 2011;Rozakis et al, 2012a), mixed integer linear programming (Chinese 2014), nonlinear programming (Stürmer et al 2011), survey information and farm-household mathematical programming (Bartolini and Viaggi, 2012), Positive…”

“…Such approach allows to add relevant contributions as compared to papers on similar topic in Italy (i.e. Chinese et al, 2014) in terms of equilibrium displacement effects under different energy policy options: i) Comparison of market clearing price for maize before (actual) and after (estimated) the introduction of biogas sector, and under pre and post 2013 biogas energy policies; ii) differential demand of land for maize silage; iii) differential biogas energy production and profitability.…”

“…Haas et al, 2011;Britz and Delzeit, 2013) suggest that public support to renewable energy may distort entrepreneurial choices when subsidies assure higher profits at lower risk (as in the case of FITs) that, in turn, implies additional costs charged to taxpayers (Chinese et al, 2014). At a time of economic stagnation, public debate arose in Italy focusing on such high costs of renewable energy support (Galeotti, 2012(Galeotti, ) prompting, in 2012 the Italian Government to introduce an incentive structure tuned with those in force in other European countries (Hahn et al, 2010).…”

“…These elements have promoted an isomorphic structure less than effective in using biogas production, with low environmental efficiency. Chinese et al (2014), investigated the effect of pre 2013 and post 2013 Italian biogas support schemes, focusing on the optimal plant size, feedstock mix and profitability, using a spatially biogas supply chain optimization model. Such simulation makes assumptions on maize supply, using cultivation and harvesting cost as a proxy for input price.…”

Internalizing the external costs of biogas supply chains in the Italian energy sector

“…Efficiencies of CHP units, which generally grow with size, were derived from [39]. Reported efficiencies also account for plant self-consumption of electricity and for heat to maintain the mesophilic process, equaling 11% of produced power and 25% of byproduced heat respectively.…”