Evaluation of a long-term potential for the development of agricultural biogas plants: A case study for the Lubelskie Province, Poland

This article presents a review of methodologies allowing for the calculation of agricultural biogas potentials on a regional level. A definition of theoretical, technical and economic potentials as well as methods for their calculation are provided. The review of the state-of-art studies in this area has indicated that despite differences in calculation methods, procedures for approximation of theoretical and technical potentials are well established. However, there have been various approaches to elaborate a methodology to calculate the economic (market) potential. In this article a scenario building approach is applied for a case study region of the Lubelskie Province, east of Poland. The results have shown that the elaborated methodology can be applied by policy makers to integrate also other renewables in planning procedures. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.