Development of a Sustainable Biogas Industry in the SJ Valley
RoadMap
Background:
- Assess the geographic availability, quantities and cost to handle the organic resource
- Examine possible business models to cost-effectively transform organic resource to energy
- Calculate potential energy production in therms, MW’s or gallons of fuel, account for air pollution benefits and green house gas emission reductions
- Describe the purpose of this document
State of Affairs:
- Describe the current rate of development for the target industry, i.e., how many units are installed? how many permits are in process? what are investors concerns and uncertainties?
- Identify path to investing in biogas production facilities, from design, financing, permitting, installation and commissioning, as well as utility contractual agreements
- Survey current efforts being undertaken at the state (Cal EPA, ARB, CDFA, CEC) and federal (US EPA, USDA, DOE) agency level, regional and local organizational efforts to advance the biogas industry in California.
Regulatory and Institutional Barriers:
- Describe the issues pertaining environmental laws and regulations that make the investment path more expensive and time consuming. Describe same impact created by utilities, IOW’s.
- Use in-the-grown testimonials from farmers and their consultants to highlight levels of frustration with the process, lost opportunities and cancellation of potential projects.
- How many projects have not being build because the permit process is onerous?
- How many more projects would be built if utility contract options were more equitable and further compensated owner of resource to make investment more profitable?
- Identify path to overcoming these barriers.
Drivers to Overcome Barriers:
- Identify regulations, energy policy objectives and economic market forces driving or that can be used to drive the development of the biogas industry
- Rank the drives by level of importance, timeliness, relevance to the regulatory agencies and utility companies, as well as to the dairy farmer and investment partners.
- Assess potential to activate drivers by legislation, collaborative efforts within regulatory agencies as well as progressive utility purchasing power policies and rates to stimulate investment.
Conclusions and recommendations:
- Summarize state-of-affairs with positive and negative developments; identify two or three recommendations that can have positive impacts and are within the scope of the SJVCEO.
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