THE BIOMETHANE DEVELOPMENT IN GERMANY, IT’S DRIVING FORCES AND A FORECAST – A SYSTEM DYNAMICS MODELLING APPROACH

摘要

The mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the reinforcement of renewable energy are well known national and international targets. Bioenergy, by the production of heat and power as well as fuel can contribute to these targets. Especially in the field of biomass based energy the difficulties lie in uncertainties of cost dynamics and policy changes (responding to continuously adopted supporting market instruments like feed-in tariffs) as well as external costs and requirements for concomitants like accumulation of nutrients in the groundwater or biodiversity. An important contribution to a sustainable and decarbonized energy economy can be made by biomethane, because it reduces GHG emissions substituting fossil energy carriers, its storable and usable in efficient combined heat and power plants. The purpose of this work is to design a model that simulates the historical biomethane market development in Germany to identify the occurring driving forces and to derive market development impacts. This is done to evaluate these driving forces and to enable the model to simulate the future biomethane market development based on three different scenarios. In this manner the ideal framework conditions for a competitive price for biomethane in comparison to fossil gas considering the traded quantity will be derived.