Our renewable energy solutions for the agri-food industry
To promote renewable energy as both energy producers and consumers, professionals in the agri-food sector need to be familiar with best practices and demonstrate that they are implementing them.
Your needs
Do you work in the food industry in roles that address the challenges of the energy transition, with a focus on integrating more renewable energy? We provide you with access to standards, market intelligence solutions, training, and audit-based recognition.
Apply for the Qualimétha certification
To ensure the success of your biogas project.
Apply for the Agrivoltaic Project certification
For developers of photovoltaic projects on agricultural and livestock farms.
Committing to CSR
ISO 26030 provides you with guidelines for implementing a comprehensive social responsibility approach.
AFNOR helps you define your needs
Why promote renewable energy in the agricultural sector?
Since the 2010s, anaerobic digestion projects have been on the rise in France, driven by a supportive legislative and regulatory framework and a desire to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and on distant or unstable countries that supply them. Anaerobic digestion involves converting organic matter into biogas through a process of anaerobic fermentation, that is, in the absence of oxygen.
An anaerobic digester can thus be compared to a giant stomach.
Separated from the digestate—the second byproduct of this reaction, which can be used as agricultural fertilizer—biogas, a gaseous mixture consisting of 60% methane, can be utilized in several ways:
- By converting it into heat and/or electricity through combustion, for local needs such as heating horticultural greenhouses
- By injecting it into a gas pipeline after purification, where “biomethane” will be blended with fossil natural gas
- By processing it into biomethane fuel to power captive fleet vehicles such as buses or garbage trucks
- By breaking it down into CO2 and H2 through a process known as methanation, to produce hydrogen.
Wood, algae, manure, agricultural byproducts or byproducts from the food industry, sewage sludge… Since methanized biomass consists of organic matter that absorbed CO2 during its formation, the process is climate-neutral: the CO2 released during biogas combustion is released in the same quantities and fuels the next cycle of photosynthesis and methanization. This is why methanization is a carbon-free renewable energy source.
Source of figures: LTECV, RED III Directive, APER Law, Méthafrance
10 %gas from renewable sources by 2030
42.5%of renewable energy in the EU’s final energy consumption by 2030
100 gigawattssolar energy in France in 2035
1 900Methane generators in France
The development of the agrivoltaic sector supported by public authorities
The role of agrivoltaics, the sector’s needs, his objectives in the work he has carried out in the Senate, the benefits of a certification program for the sector… Jean-Pierre Moga, Senator from Lot-et-Garonne, shares his insights on the resolution introduced in the Senate regarding this topic.
