Viability of Biogas as Potential Replacement of Natural Gas in Latvia

摘要

As the need for renewable resource usage is increased to reduce environmental impacts caused by greenhouse gases, there will be a necessity to replace the existing ways of primary energy production with new ones. Especially given that Latvia strongly depends on imported natural gas as one of the major energy sources, it is important to develop domestic energy supplies, thus ensuring self-sufficiency and to reduce the dependence on external factors. One of the options as replacement energy source could be biogas. Biogas production through anaerobic digestion is considered to be an optimal solution of different types of organic waste, converting these waste materials into renewable energy and organic fertilizer. However, the lack of existing effective biogas transmission and distribution network's lead to trend to utilize the energy near the plant site often having low efficiency and therefore cannot serve as a viable long term source of energy. In areas where large biogas plants are present and they could account for a significant share of primary energy. However it would be more effective to utilize the existing natural gas transmission networks to achieve higher efficiency. For this upgrading of biogas to the required level would be necessary before using it in mixture with the natural gas. Economical assessment must be done before this process is carried out, as biogas plants are mostly decentralized and with relatively low energy capacity. In this paper the energy potential of biogas plants in Latvia as well as possibility to use biogas in mixture with natural gas is analysed. Also the economical aspect of such process in case of Latvia is assessed.