The production of renewable energy form agricultural resources competes with food production for land, water and soil nutrients. The increased demand for energy crop may raise global land use change including greenhouse gas emissions and cause food insecurity in several regions. Sustainability of EU biogas production relies on both future agriculture and energy production systems and decision tools that allow farmers to self-control their practices so as to achieve their economic goals and minimize the impact of activities on environment and food security and decision makers to assign supports based on proper understandings of risks.

1. i
Project description:
Challenges and Opportunities of Biogas Production
in the European Union
Keywords: Biogas, Food security, Greenhouse gas emissions, European Simulation Model,
Integrative assessment model, Scenarios, Photo-bioreactor, Edible insects, Microalgae,
Bacteria, biorefinery, Lifecycle Assessment, Unlocking Investment Opportunities
Presented by
Patrice Djoko Noumodje
Email: djoko.noumodje@gmail.com
dnpatrice2001@yahoo.fr

2. 1
The production of biogas from agricultural resources contributes to the mitigation of greenhouse gas
emissions and helps European farmers to diversify their incomes so as to withstand the progressive
integration of sustainability measures in the common agricultural policy (CAP). By contrast, the
increased demand of energy crops may affect the world market prices and average crop prices in the
European Union. The change of term of trade of major crops may increase land and other resources
allocated to the production of energy crops at the expense of food cereal and thus have repercussions
on environment and food security elsewhere. As the marginal propensity to spend on food cereal is
higher in the rest of the world than in the European Union, the decline in terms of trade might even
offset the income effect of development aid.
European Simulation Model (ESIM) is the Partial Equilibrium (PE) model designed to examine the
effect of shocks on the EU agricultural market, but the impact of potential changes at farm level
cannot be highlighted by PE models. In fact, producers always faced decisions concerning the
allocation of their limited resources in various components of the farming systems. They sought for
alternative cropping systems that optimize the existing and underutilize land to contribute to the
EU2030 objectives. A weak association of animal breeding to crop production can increase the carbon
emission of farming activities, undermine the positive reserve of ecological focus areas and thereby
cancel the GHG mitigation effect of biogas production. The irrational use of biogas production
residues as a valuable fertilizer may accelerate the eutrophication of lakes. ESIM model does not
depict structural and technological changes that are occurring with the introduction of new
technologies (in particular those for lignocellulosic and woody biomass, microalgae and edible
insects) and that have the potential by enabling biomethane production and provision of high quality
nutritional proteins for relaxing the global biomass demand. It does consider neither GHG emissions
associated with the production of biomass and its use for energy nor emissions caused indirectly
through increased imports of agricultural commodities. ESIM model does not examine the mandatory
reduction targets of the non-ETS energy sector that may have strong effects on biomass demand and
therefore affect the entire agricultural sector. GHG emission mitigation policies enacted
simultaneously by other economies are not depicted in ESIM model, but still they might amplify price
effects. The model does not include in the analysis important sectors that are closely linked to the
biomass demand, such as fossil energy sectors and fossil-based energy demand. In this perspective,
the government support systems, which mainly concentrate on the biogas production, appeared to be
economically and environmentally inefficient, if the energy transition, food security and CO2
emission reduction are the overall objective. Of particular interest is to extend the modelling system
to cover innovative technologies related to biomass supply and initiate difference in model system in
order to derive conclusion on global food security and welfare and indirect global land use change
including GHG emissions effects.
Although the interface between global crop market model, regional economic farm emission model
and lifecycle assessment results helps to draw environmental as well as economic statements on the
shifting effects of changing demand for certain agricultural products, the resulting modelling system
ignores the underlying causes of environmental degradation. In fact, the statements on long-term
biogas demand effects on global food security and welfare cannot be made only from the fact of rising
food prices. The relationship between food prices on world markets and household food security is
complex and the impacts on both the economy and household level may differ by country. Higher
world market prices for food decrease the foreign trade balance of net food-importing countries, but
increase it for net food – exporting countries. Increasing food prices negatively affect the income of
net food buying households, whereas net food selling ones are positively affected. Further, higher

3. 2
world market prices of major crops increase foreign direct investments and induce different forms of
contract farming and vertical coordination since smallholder farmers are not equipped to compete in
a globalized market. As a result, the role of supplying farmers changes from independent farmers, to
contracted-farmers, quasi farmers and to farmer workers which may have important welfare
implications. Thus, the effectiveness of biogas production depends on new sense of global partnership
in which people and countries understand that their fates are linked, sectors previously seen as
domestic have become international and that a good international formula is for national interest. This
insight imposes to marry international perspectives with regional, national and local perspectives. EU
biogas strategy should align the multi-region, multi-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE)
model for climate policy analysis that provides both a unifying framework for combining
technological details of bottom-up models and large-scale richness of top-down model and a structure
for establishing and sharing responsibilities among regions and even across sectors.
Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model is the analytical tool designed to examine and derive
computationally the impacts of policies or shocks in the entire economy, but the impact of land use
change, trade differentiation and climate and energy policies cannot be highlighted by standard CGE
models. In fact, standard CGE model does not consider carbon emissions (CO2) and market emissions
permits and allowances. Usually technical progress is exogenous in the standard CGE model, and yet
technological progress can raise total factor productivity or productivity of certain input factor like
labour or energy. Standard CGE model neither divides output into exports and domestic supply nor
splits consumption into a constant (subsistence level) and variable part. It is not suitable for handling
decision making problem since it is conceived with the aim of finding the equilibrium of a system.
Although individual optimizing behaviour and decisions of consumers and firms are embedded in
functions describing the agents’ choices in response to the values of variables facing them, there is
no clear objective functions to optimize. In standard CGE model, the economy is producing on its
production possibility frontier. As all factors are maximized, factor market balance and condition of
profit maximization are held and no resources are left over. Though, an equilibrium may involve for
many economic problems some goods not being used and therefore some resources left over or some
possible trade links not being actively used. These shortcomings hinder any initiatives related to the
monitoring of the expansion of biogas in the EU so as to handle the effect on food security,
environment and global welfare.
Keeping track of the expansion of biogas in the context of uncertainties requires tools and instruments
for predicting and assessing alternative futures and pathways to achieve the desired future. Scenarios
and integrative assessment models are combined to develop decision tools that enable policy makers
to monitor the evolution of biogas production, ensure its sustainability and to assign support based
on proper understanding of risks. Circularity and lifecycle assessment software, corporate
sustainability software solution and green building software enable stakeholders to improve the
environmental performance of products and services through the reduction of scope 1, 2 and 3
emissions and to generate ecological spaces necessary for offsetting irreducible GHG emissions.
Having combined material circularity indicators, lifecycle assessment results and multifunctional
agriculture assessment results into one index and then integrated that index in farm model, the
internet-based and user-friendly software enables farmers to self-control their practices so as to
optimize their economic goals while minimizing the impact of the activities on the environment and
global food security.

4. 3
Although decision tools enable stakeholders to monitor the sustainability of biogas production from
agricultural resources, they circumvent the real problem related to population growth and its strains
on limited resources. They do neither enable stakeholders to fully decouple pressures on natural
resources and environmental impacts from economic growth nor allow them to really address major
societal challenges such as climate change, food insecurity and poverty and therefore need to be
complemented with future agricultural and energy production systems.
Given that carbon sequestration potential, soil carbon content and biodiversity characteristics vary
from one ecosystem or ecological focus area to another, the greening instruments as currently
implemented are unlikely to significantly enhance the CAP’s environmental and climate
performances. They are based on obligations of means but not results. They are set neither to put
stakeholders on the path to really achieve clear and sufficiently ambitious environmental targets nor
to give EU authorities the possibility to ensure fairer distribution of direct payments. Carbon farming
is the smart approach for decoupling direct payments from crop areas to soil carbon contents. Carbon
farming solves the classic free-rider problems associated to environmentally friendly purchasing
since it enables consumers to reward through price premium the real effort for environmental
protection.
Edible insects, microalgae, lignocellulosic and woody biomass and bacteria are used to form a new
pillar of food and energy system that is decoupled from both agriculture and fossil fuels. While insects
can be grown on organic wastes reducing environmental contamination, algae cultivation may be
used for digestates and agricultural wastewaters treatment for the production of food, feed,
biofertilizers and methane and greenhouse gas credits. Bacteria can digest carbon dioxide to produce
feed protein for aquaculture. More practically, microalgal biomethane production integrated with
existing biogas plant improves the value of digestates to farmers, diversifies incomes through the
development of microalgae-based products and solve the eutrophication potential of biogas by-
products. Biomethane obtained through biomass thermochemical conversion belongs to the category
of second generation biofuels which in contrast to first generation does not enter in direct competition
with crop for food and fodder. With the integration of food and non-food activities on the same land
parcels, cascade use of biomass is the smart way to use natural resources and minimize the
competition between food and non-food use of organic matter. Biorefinery fed of agricultural biomass
and wood allows the designing of the future factory that produces plant-based proteins, chemicals,
omega fatty acids, bioplastics and biofuels. While biofuels play a significant role in regard to carbon
emission reduction in the transportation sector, plant-based proteins are contributing to solve
livestock crisis. Biomass residues processing to value added chemical building blocks for biobased
products improve material efficiency measures for green buildings.
New infrastructure investments are needed to ensure the sustainability of biogas production in the
European Union and to make infrastructure contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions,
improving footprint of products and services and more resilient to the effect of climate change.
However, high-capital and technology-intensive investments are exposed to financial and operating
risks that private companies and farmers are unaccustomed to dealing with, managing and mitigating
and do not want to expose their own balance-sheets directly to those risks. Handling this situation
requires raising money in a special purpose vehicle that has no recourse or very limited recourse to
farmers or private companies. Cascading approach for unlocking investment opportunities is
deployed to mobilize and crowd public and private funds to finance infrastructure, make the risks to
investor’s balance-sheets quite remote and therefore to ensure the transformational shift towards
sustainable biogas production in the European Union.