ΒΙΟΑΕΡΙΟ LAGADA SA was established in 2013
aiming to build and operate this biogas plant.
The company's shareholders are divided into five groups,
of which four groups are livestock farmers
from the wider Lagadas region
and one group of agronomic researchers.
The concept was conceived in 2011,
and after the company was founded in 2013,
a long licensing period of almost three years followed,
with construction starting in May 2016,
and being completed in September 2016.
This particular unit's electrical capacity is one megawatt.
The plant's raw material mix consists of approximately
seventy per cent cow manure,
fifteen per cent chicken droppings,
produced by chickens used either for egg production or fattening,
and about one and a half per cent of energy plants,
in our case, maize silage.
Beyond that, the remaining raw materials
are food industry organic waste
and anything else that arises
and is available at any time for use in our plant.
On an annual basis this unit produces
8,500 megawatt hours of electricity
which is sold directly to the PPC,
and about 6,500 megawatts hours
of thermal energy for self-consumption,
i.e. heating of digestion tanks
and for the pasteurisation of raw materials.
At this point, we should mention the environmental
and also financial benefits of this unit.
The environmental benefits include the savings
in carbon dioxide emissions,
which are about 600 tones of carbon dioxide per year,
and the financial benefits which include:
the direct or indirect creation of jobs
- here we should mention the benefits of the digested residue
used as fertilizer in the fields of the surrounding areas.
It should also be mentioned here that this plant
is a brilliant example of a circular economy,
because the digested residue of the anaerobic digestion process
is used, as we said, as a soil improving additive
in the fields cultivated by the plant's share holders,
for the production of their feed, so the circle closes perfectly here.
Beyond this, the future plans of ΒΙΟΑΕΡΙΟ LAGADA SA
include the expansion of this unit from one megawatt
to two megawatts of electrical power.
