While transport sectors are advancing towards low-carbon solutions, industrial heat lacks any consensus plan and has a long to-do list to develop low-carbon alternatives. The options include biodiesel, renewable electricity, renewable natural gas, solar thermal, geothermal, thermal storage and hydrogen. Yet as a best guess, if these were market-ready today, renewable thermal solutions would cost from two times to over 10 times more than fossil fuels, according to an October report from the Center for Global Energy Policy (CGEP) at Columbia University…At that price, most farms or town dumps can’t afford to develop biogas collection on their own. “An effective certification program [with purchases tracked by ABC member M-RETS] could give lenders the confidence to fund new installations,” Patterson said. And if farms see reliable demand for their RNG, more are likely to make the investment: supply grows; prices fall; and the Catch-22 can be broken. More >>
