The good and the bad sides of the amendment of the Renewable Energy Sources Act seen from the pig keepers point of view

Friday the week before last, the amendment of the Renewable Energy Sources Act was enacted by the Federal Government. In it, new reimbursement rates were fixed for infeed for biogas plants as well as for current produced from wind energy, solar energy, waterpower and geothermal en-ergy.

Basically, the pig keepers look upon sustainable utilisation of bio-energy favourably. Even if the amendment was very much overdue – it needs to be looked at in a more differentiated way. For quite some time, the ISN had demanded for making various amendments, which unfortunately were taken into consideration to some extent only. Some success, however, could be achieved.

The ISN, for instance, supported the idea that a so-called liquid-manure bonus be introduced, because the floor space required would be limited this way and the in-house organic fertilizers would get improved. Now this liquid-manure bonus was introduced. Up to a capacity of 150 kWh, 4 cents per kWh are paid. Up to 500 kWh, 1 cent still is paid per kWh if there is a 30 percent share at least of liquid manure. As a result of the cut-off criterion, there is no bonus for higher performance categories.

Another request was related to a combined-heat-and-power-generation bonus. Through this, the facilities’ economy would be improved and the utilisation of the heat produced would be pushed forward, as, for instance, goes for digestate applied in fertilizer production. This way, it was possible to ease the situation with backlog nutriment especially in regions where large numbers of livestock are held. This bonus was raised by 1 cent of late.

In the first place, the drying of digestate was meant to be retained in the combined-heat-and-power-generation bonus and continues to be an important issue, as it has been throughout all the discussions. By utilising biogas-generated heat for concentrating the separated digestate, transportable fertilizers will be producible in future which may be brought to regions where nutriment is insufficient.

It’s a satisfying fact, too, that there will be no shifting of government aid from originally me-dium-sized biogas plants to large-scale industrial biogas plants run by institutional investors, as had been for a while before! Such kind of large-scale consumers of primary products and crop require enormous floor space at their sites. On top of that, the large gas-supply plants usually are run by the major power suppliers such as E.ON, RWE and others. Since for biogas plants of this size the technology bonus was lowered compared with what had been planned in the government draft and since plant operators were committed to run heat-led combined heat and power plants, additional competition for floor space was averted.

So far so good. Unfortunately, there still is the other side of the medal, even with the amend-ment of the Renewable Energy Sources Act. For the consumers, the costs continue to be on a high level, because ever more money needs to be spent on energy and food.

In addition to that, the pig keepers had always demanded that the bonus paid for renewable primary products be abolished or at least be reduced to a clearly noticeable extent. Now quite the opposite has happened: This kind of bonus was even increased by 1 cent! It’s a pity really that this bonus mostly gets to the landlords in reality instead of arriving at the maize produc-ers! The same thing goes for the feeding-in reimbursement increase.

Make yourselves aware of about what amounts we are speaking: Under certain conditions, a biogas plant using up to 30 percent liquid manure may generate a total increase by up to 4.9 cents per kWh! This composes of a 1.9 cent liquid-manure bonus (new) + a 1 cent bonus for renewable primary products + a 1 cent bonus for maintaining the critical values for formalde-hyde according to the Technical Instructions on Air Quality + an additional 1 cent combined-heat-and-power-generation bonus. Imagine: If you figure that out for a 500 kWh biogas plant, this corresponds to a possible annual additional proceeds of up to EUR 200 000!! It is true that the required investment costs (such as for a new or additional combined-heat-and-power-generation concept: new heating for the piglet house, the residential house, the greenhouse and others as well as for the emission bonus (critical values for formaldehyde)) still need to be paid out of this. Yet, it is an enormous monetary advantage, compared with the livestock im-provement business! It must be admitted that the biogas plant operators have been deeply in the red over the last months. First and foremost, the upcoming increases of the reimburse-ment rates will allow them to produce a well-balanced operating profit again.

But in the long run, the fact may not be foreclosed that an increased reimbursement will be reflected in the leasehold market. This will most particularly be the case if the situation does not get better on the primary-products market (maize).

Converting it to the 200 hectares floor space requirement of a 500 kWh plant, this means an amount of up to EUR 1 000 per hectare won through the above-mentioned increase of reim-bursement (without consideration of additional investment needs). That’s quite a motivation for generating power, isn’t it?

But then, where does the feed needed for the pigs come from? – As a matter of fact, competi-tion will persist with regard to floor space! It’s just that further intensification of the conflict could be averted this time. However, with an ongoing shortage of floor space the feeding stuff costs will remain on a high level. The question still needs to be answered: What will we use the farmland for: generating energy or producing nutriment?

Photo: Friedrich Hake, piglet's breeder und pig fattener from Hameln / Lower Saxony and ISN Board Member