Maximilien Tanchaud

Abstract

We evaluate the impact of the installation of biogas units in France between 2015 and 2023 using a staggered difference-in-differences design. To address the endogenous location of biogas plants, identification relies on comparisons between treated and not-yet-treated areas within a local geographic window, using estimators robust to treatment effect heterogeneity over time, with no evidence of differential pre-treatment trends. Our preliminary results corroborate findings from the agronomy literature: the introduction of biogas units leads to a reallocation of crops toward short-term sequential and high-methanogenic crops, at the expense of longer-term crops. These initial findings, combined with the recent authorization1 granted by the French Na- tional Statistical Confidentiality Committee to access detailed administrative data (from January 15th), will allow us to deliver definitive results on other key economic and environmental dimensions of biogas deployment, including farmers’ income, fertilizer use, and pesticide use within the circular economy framework. We plan to present the full results at IOEA 2026.