What happens when the cost and complexity of IED compliance collide with a changing economic case for anaerobic digestion?

The traditional drivers for AD are shifting. Energy incentives are disappearing, the value and route for recovered energy are changing, while requirements around process emissions, TVOCs, secondary containment and ATC could demand substantial new investment. At some sites, the question may no longer be simply how do we comply? but does continued digestion still stack up?

For ageing or constrained sites, alternatives such as lime may start to look attractive – at least in the short term. But losing AD capacity brings its own consequences for energy recovery, emissions, sludge treatment capacity and the wider environmental balance.

And there are uncomfortable questions around the investment itself. Will increasingly complex emissions abatement deliver the intended outcome? What happens when methane slip, CHP emissions and wider carbon impacts are included? Can some existing sites realistically achieve secondary containment requirements? And with uncertainty around landbank and ATC still to resolve, how does the industry make investment decisions that may need to last for decades?

Join the panel to challenge the assumptions and explore what all of this means for the future economics of digestion. Are we investing in the next generation of AD or reaching the point where some of the fundamentals need to be reconsidered?
 

Chaired by Matt Smyth, Director, Aqua Environment Solutions Limited