Our work was divided in two major chapter:
- A market analysis that identified the high potential markets in terms of economic context, energetic demand and biomass availability
- Meetings with stakeholders including farmers, energy and waste management companies
The market analysis aimed to sort the European markets according to their potential. This work was performed by studying where AD plants where already widely found and which countries had an active support scheme. This work showed that countries like Germany, the Nordic countries, Denmark, the Netherlands or the Czech Republic experienced mature market regarding AD plants. Nevertheless, the technological innovation that brings DualMetha could be a solution for certain plants in order to treat other kind of waste and consolidate their model. The second type of countries had a promising economic context (biomethane demand, feed-in tariffs, biomass availability) but a small existing number of plants. These high potential countries are for instance Italy, France or the United Kingdom. The last market category gather all the countries that have the technical potential to experience a large AD plants development but lack an economic framework.
This market study also addressed more macroeconomic challenges in order to understand the challenges that could face the DualMetha development. Even if the availability of biomass could be a subject in some territory, we believe that the potential in Europe is still highly unexploited and that it will not be a great risk for the coming decade. Moreover, our technological innovation brings the capacity of processing any waste - the combination with pyrolysis could also widen the range of processed waste (wood, plastics) – which will be an asset to differ from the competition. The main macroeconomic challenge is the profitability of AD plants that could be jeopardized by the gas prices, the fall of feed-in tariffs or the end of subsidies. In order to outlast such an event, DualMetha is focused on bringing a low operating cost solution to the market. We are confident that our technology will success to become this “low-cost” solution.
The second-part of our work was about meeting relevant stakeholders in order to gather feedback on our technology and on our economic model. These meetings aimed to understand the potential client expectations and take into account the point of view of possible partners.
Our interview with farmers were held in France, with mainly cereal farmers that are our first market. They expressed a great interest in the technical solution and understood why our innovations brought a solid answer to the current situation. They also had a positive look on the leasing model as it is a way for them to avoid investing large amounts of money and lowering their investment capacity on other equipment. They also brought some modification to the system or to its operation mode in order to ease their use of it.
Our meetings with other stakeholders also brought some positive feedback. The waste management companies we met saw the versatility of the system as a great asset in order to develop new ways of managing organic waste, as today the sorting of the waste is an important cost. The energy companies, and more specifically the gas network operators, want to assist the development of biomethane in Europe and saw DualMetha as a new technology that could help widen the spread of AD plants on the continent.
The conclusion of our feasibility work shows that there is a great demand for the DualMetha solution and a positive feedback on its economic model. We also have shown that most of European markets hold an important potential. The SME Instrument helped us understand what step are needed to be made to reach a market ready stage and opened a perspective on new technological development to widen our commercial development.
