It’s no surprise that, as of July 1, 2023, anaerobic digestion plants producing more than 19.5 GWh per year must be able to provide traceability of their inputs. The aim of this European regulation is to encourage and supervise the production of renewable energy. However, this initiative is putting a strain on many methanizer farmers, who find themselves faced with the complex challenge of tracing all the inputs incorporated into their methanizer. Indeed, producers need to be able to make the link between the different materials incorporated and those that come out.
Several farmers have expressed their dissatisfaction at the difficulty of following such a process. The anger of some of them is all the more accentuated when we know that, as yet, there is no electronic form available for submitting their declaration.
Despite the difficulties caused by RED II, the regulations allow certification of a farm’s sustainability for 5 years, adding real added value to it. Although this regulation only applies to a quarter of production units, the European challenge is to encourage smaller farms to become certified. “In February 2023, Jean-François Delaitre, President of the Association des agriculteurs méthaniseurs de France, explained: “Certification schemes will help create confidence, which will flow from politicians to consumers, and the economic profitability of the sector will come from recognition of the sustainability of the energy produced.
So how do we deal with the difficulty of this traceability, whether an obligation for some or a choice for others, at a time when farmers are already facing other, more worrying issues? As it turns out, LOADIX’s functionalities make this task much easier. LOADIX is an automatic handling robot whose primary role is to incorporate organic waste into the methanizer. It is perfectly capable of tracking the type and weight of the material it has discharged into the methanizer. In this way, it greatly solves the problem of the weight and multiplicity of inputs incorporated, thanks to its application which tracks all the tasks it has carried out.
The adoption of technological solutions like LOADIX represents a significant step forward in overcoming challenges such as traceability, and could well become a common alternative in the agricultural sector in years to come.
