Economic sustainability of biomethane: The green revolution in the transport sector.
The transport sector has a low penetration of renewable energy representing a serious obstacle to tackle the climate change. Biomethane isa decarbonisation solution and the recovery of some wastesupports the development of circular economy models. This presentation aims to investigate its economic sustainability. An integrated SWOT-AHP analysis is applied to the biomethane sector showing as the adoption of governmental support programs plays a key role. An economic model based on DCF methodology is proposedto evaluate the profitability of biomethane plants. Currently, production costs of biomethane are not competitive with fossil gas. Its discounted value varies from 0.61 to 0.88 €/m3 for by-products and from 0.64 to 0.91 €/m3 for organic waste. The economic feasibility is verified only in some scenarios and subsidies play a key role. Furthermore, the variation of critical variables significantly influences the profitability leading to the necessity to present alternative case studies. Currently, energy companies are interested in plants realization that recovered organic wastes due to the additional income obtained by their treatment. Finally, biomethane can be defined as a value added resource that integrates waste management and renewable energy supporting the reduction of the air pollution.
Short Bio
Idiano D’Adamo is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of L’Aquila. He obtained Italian National Qualification for Associate Professor position on August 2018. He received the Master of Science in Management Engineering in 2008 and the Ph.D. in Electrical and Information Engineering in 2012. Both from the University of L’Aquila. His current research interests are circular economy, renewable energy, sustainability and waste management. In August 2015, he obtained the Elsevier Atlas Price with a work published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. During his academic career, Idiano D’Adamo published 50 papers indexed in the Scopus database, reaching an h-index of 19. His works are published in leading international journals, as Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Energy Conversion and Management, Journal of Cleaner Production, Science of the Total Environment, Energy and Buildings, International Journal of Systems Science and International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy. He is a reviewer of about fourty-five journals indexed in Scopus. He received two Excellence Review Awards: Waste Management in 2017 and Resources Conservation and Recycling in 2018. Idiano D’Adamo is Guest Editor of two special issues and an Editor for the section Social Economics of Social Sciences.