Renewable energy in the news: Environmental, economic, policy and technology discussion of biogas

Decentralised production and consumption of biogas is often argued to provide multiple opportunities for accelerating the transition towards sustainable development. This research focuses on the long-term coverage of biogas in two widely read Finnish newspapers. The results show a relatively voluminous professional but weaker and scattered mainstream media coverage of biogas. Four key storylines of public debate relevant for sustainability transition are investigated. First, the environmental impacts of biogas have been described under strikingly positive framings highlighting a potential for various environmental benefits. In particular, growing emphasis has been placed on natural resource management following the idea of circular economy. Second, the economic storyline has casted doubts on profitability of biogas production by emphasising the need for public subsidies. Newspaper coverage has focused on the micro level economic performance of energy producers and left the macro level economic implications of biogas with little attention. Third, the energy policy storyline has framed biogas predominantly as a local-level solution without extensively discussing a national level target setting for biogas. Fourth, the technology storyline has been relatively thin and it has emphasised the novelty of biogas production without highlighting any major technological problems or risks. Overall, the newspaper coverage of biogas has not seriously challenged the dominant energy discourse taking the centralised energy production as a self-evident overall context of national energy system. The results suggest that there exists a considerable variation between different media and between different national contexts. These variations should be taken into account when designing and implementing energy policies.