Biogas production in the local area will be upgraded and some new plants will be established. The aim is that the need for gas in Skive municipality is going to be covered by biogas and that the gas shall pass through the natural gas network.
Project description
Biogas production will help to maintain job/activity, provide more environmentally friendly heat and power, be a tool to secure the ground water and improving the area's natural quality, reduce odours from manure spreading and creating a more secure production base for agriculture in the area.
The agricultural challenge in handling the slurry, the municipals desire for development, rather than settle in rural areas coupled with a forward-looking energy policy is one of Skive municipality's responses to some of the environmental and energy challenges that will be present in the future.
Through four subprojects, Skive municipality cooperate with agricultural industry and other businesses on a solution of the above issues. One of the projects must ensure and improve the groundwater under the island Fur, while 50 highly energy-consuming jobs on the island are secured. Because of the harmony rules, farmers in northern Salling are forced to deliver their manure on Fur. This is happening today with unprocessed manure, which is a threat to groundwater. Bring the slurry rather through a biogas and a slurry pill presses before residual product brought out in the fields, ensuring a synergy between a fertilizer product having less threatening groundwater, and a slurry pill is a cost and climate related alternative energy source. Skive municipality sees a way forward for Fur with a four shared synergy:
- Agriculture brings into play the manure to produce biogas and energy contenting manure pills
- The environment and groundwater escape nutrient surplus, where the manure generated by a biogas plant, before being brought out in the fields. The process contributes to the groundwater in Fur in the future to meet the future water plans
- Energy-dependent enterprises get, with the biogas and manure pills, a cheap energy alternative that can maintain competitiveness
- Workstations in the local area are maintained – extended with new ones in connection with the gas and slurry pellet production
Financing
Funding for these projects is through the Growth Forum, Central Denmark Region.
Status and results
With redistribution of tasks though the structural reform, the municipalities become a key player in these issues. As subprojects Skive municipality will try to solve problems with customized energy solutions in a way that they solve the practical problems with maximum synergy in the local area. The idea is that the sum of synergy at the local level will be high enough to achieve success at regional level.
Success depends on agricultural willingness to cooperate with the municipality on long-term comprehensive solutions. A prerequisite for this is trust. Therefore, dialogue and openness are pillars of cooperation in the sub-projects. The municipality wants all the cards on the table from the start, so the farmer's production permit will be long term and provide investment certainty. Therefore, involved are both Agricultural department, Environment department and the Municipal planning department and a team from the Town Energy Skive in project options.
However, there are owls in the bog. A state failure announcement on Water Plans and the Natura 2000 plans as well as changes in energy and heat supply law creates uncertainty for both the farmer and the municipality. Therefore, Skive municipality by developing applications in cooperation with the region, with the aim of raising funds to illuminate the technical and regulatory barriers in relation to meeting the individual subprojects. At the same time sought the funds were used to inform about the social gains that the individual creates synergy. In this way, the projects serve as a template for solving similar problems elsewhere in the country.