The role of energy policy in agricultural biogas energy production in Visegrad countries

Abstract

Abstract.Energy production by agricultural biogas plants has recently recorded considerable growth in Visegrad countries. The development was enhanced by European Union's efforts to increase the proportion of energy produced from renewable sources. The paper aims to assess the role of energy policy in the development of agricultural biogas energy production in Visegrad region. Conducted studies have shown that among various forms of support for energy production from renewable energy sources, the price system prevails, including the support by feed in tariffs and bonuses. Feed in tariffs were adopted in Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. Another kind of support system -a quota system -was adopted in Poland, what includes tendering and certificate systems. The results confirm the adoption of legal framework was necessary step to enable agricultural biogas energy production in Visegrad countries, but itself it was not enough to stimulate development of agricultural biogas energy production significantly. Rapid development in each country was recorded only after the certain financial support systems took effect, what made production of agricultural biogas energy economically efficient for investors. The production of energy from agricultural biogas grew the most in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, where the financial support was the highest. Nevertheless, the protracted process of changes in legal framework and transformation of energy policy, certain measures including state-controlled price-making systems, risk regarding with auction system might hamper agricultural biogas energy production further development.

Renewables projects in peripheries: determinants, challenges and perspectives of biogas plants – insights from Central European countries

“…In order to shed more light on the varieties of determinants, challenges and perspectives of anaerobic digestion plants in selected countries of Central Europe (Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic) and inspired by previous studies (Martinát et al, 2013(Martinát et al, , 2016Chodkowska-Miszczuk et al, 2017, 2019a, 2019bFrantál et al, 2018) we decided to employ a combination of social sciences methods so that commonalities, differences and peculiarities of individual biogas sectors could be revealed and better understood. After a robust literature retrieval was conducted, it was decided to implement surveys and semi-structured interviews as research methods.…”

“…The Czech Republic was the first country among the CEECs to define the basic legal regulations concerning the RES sector in the form of the Act in 2005. It was later followed by Slovakia, and then by Poland (Chodkowska-Miszczuk et al, 2017). The order in which the studied countries passed legislative documents on RES correlates with their position in the energy transition index (ETI) (WEF, 2018).…”

Community tensions, participation, and local development: Factors affecting the spatial embeddedness of anaerobic digestion in Poland and the Czech Republic

“…Indeed, legal loopholes enable them to take actions which surprise the local community, e.g. by modifying the structure of feedstock (from purpose-grown maize to waste) for biogas production dictated by their worsening economic condition, which in turn stems from drastic cuts of subsidies for green energy (Chodkowska-Miszczuk et. al, 2017).…”

Interpreting regional and local diversities of the social acceptance of agricultural AD plants in the rural space of the Moravian-Silesian Region (Czech Republic)

“…(Kabai, 2017;Szendi, 2016). Considering the location of agricultural AD plants, they are frequently situated within agricultural farms, which produce huge amounts of agricultural waste that could be energetically processed (Chodkowska-Miszczuk et al, 2017;Balat and Balat, 2009). Unfortunately, this is hardly the case in the Czech Republic, , where the main input material for agricultural AD plants involves purposely grown maize.…”