Biogas and the biogas industry can help meet several of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and create sustainable conditions in agriculture and society.
At Biogas Express, we have set up the specific goals that biogas can help to meet and at the same time tried to explain how:
Goal 2: Stop hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture
With its circular economy, where waste and manure from, among other things, agriculture are converted into both energy and fertilizer, the biogas industry can help to create a sustainable agriculture that takes both climate and the environment into account.
Goal 6: Clean water and sanitation
One problem in agriculture is that groundwater is polluted through raw manure that is spread out onto the fields. But in the biogas process, a conversion of nitrite to nitrate takes place. Nitrate is the form of nitrogen available to the plants, which is why the fertilizer value is increased in degassed biomass rather than raw manure. Thereby, more fertilizer is absorbed by the plants and leaching to the surroundings is reduced.
Goal 7: Sustainable energy – ensure that everyone has access to reliable, sustainable and modern energy at an affordable price
Biogas plants can help to create employment in agriculture and growth on the farms, as, among other things, earnings are provided based on waste, catch crops and manure and the yield is improved on the basis of the increased utilization of nutrients.
Goal 11: Sustainable cities and communities
By 2030, the negative environmental impact per. per capita is reduced, including by placing special emphasis on air quality and on household and other waste management.
Among other things, biogas also consists of organic waste from households and can thus help to utilize waste and residues as a resource.
Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production – ensure sustainable consumption and forms of production
Biogas production is a form of renewable energy that uses otherwise untapped resources that operate in its own CO2-neutral cycle. In addition, it is important that sustainable and ethically responsible sources are used, and that an effort is made to make the whole process even more climate-friendly and sustainable in the form of the vehicles that e.g. transports waste and manure etc.
Goal 13: Climate action
For most this will be very obvious, that biogas has several climate benefits, but in particular biogas helps to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This applies in particular to methane gas, nitrous oxide and CO2, which also helps to dispel the use of fossil fuels such as natural gas, coal, diesel and petrol, which is of great benefit to the climate.