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Abstract
By 2020, Dutch dairy chains envisage to be self‐sufficient with regard to energy used by dairy farms and dairy
processors. This would require dairy farms to produce 25 PJ per year, possibly by a combination of wind, solar and
biogas. This paper focuses on biogas. To evaluate the project’s viability we estimated the expected technical and
financial performance of 4 types of business models, i.e. “CHP‐farm”, “CHP‐large”, “green gas” and “central
upgrading of green gas”. Data stem from among others 23 biogas plants in the Netherlands. Anticipating that CHPmodels
and green gas models occur with a likelihood of 40% and 60% respectively, the total number of biogas
plants would amount to 232 (1% of dairy farms), including a total of 5 million tons of manure per year (14% of all
cattle manure in the Netherlands) and annual government subsidies of Euro 295 million. Aggregated annual profits
are expected to be positive, but over the project’s total life time there is an expected deficit of Euro 262. For this to
change costs of feedstocks or digestate disposal costs would for instance have to go down. Also fully switching to
green gas models dampens the deficit. Results are used in current stakeholders debates on the organization of an
“energy neutral dairy chain” in the Netherlands. Further analyses incorporating uncertainty around key technical
and economic parameters including financial impacts of CO2‐reductions are underway.