Farmers diversify their activities and also become energy producers thanks to anaerobic digestion. Biomethane makes it possible to turn our back on hydrocarbons by producing local energy in all the territories of France.
As part of the Agricultural Show, Fanny Agostini wishes to highlight an energy often criticized, biomethane.
It is true that the suspicions are legitimate, how to produce clean energy making it possible to fight against climate change when in the word methanisation one hears "methane"? It is a greenhouse gas, it seems contradictory and yet ... To make anaerobic digestion, you need a raw material available largely on farms, either biomass, plants or agricultural effluents such as manure. We are going to put this matter in an aerobic digester, that is to say in a large tank in a situation of oxygen deprivation. There, bacteria will come to digest the mixture which will ferment and heat, which makes energy. A gas called biomethane which, after filtration, is ready to be injected into the network to heat homes, cook chops or keep our cars moving.
Doesn't that release greenhouse gases?
It does not smell, it does not release methane into the atmosphere and it allows you to turn your back on hydrocarbons by producing local energy in all the territories of France. This does not compete with food production. Anaerobic digestion is also good here, because the crop rotation makes it possible not to bring food production into competition with that of other plants which will be planted alternately and which, by growing, will capture CO2 and then produce energy via anaerobic digestion. It is beneficial in every way!
This allows farmers to diversify and find other sources of income.
This is why the association of farmers and methanizers of France finds its account there with a new source of income, by developing agricultural by-products from their farms. This is beneficial for farmers who can become energy producers but also for all of us, especially who can consume it. Clean energy that ticks all the boxes and that should and must find a more important place in the energy mix in the coming years to decarbonize the economy by exploiting the full potential of the resources that we find locally, in our territories, in our countryside and on our farms.