The Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry offered investment grants for agricultural biogas plants during 2008-2010. Twenty three (23) proposals for biogas plants received grants. Eight (8) plants were under construction or already built using this grant at the time this survey (spring 2013), one (1) plant used other financial support and fourteen (14) projects fell through. The reasons for building a biogas plant were diverse. Most often farmers or entrepreneurs integrated the biogas plant as a part of their other actions. The aim was usually to produce energy for the farm or enterprise located on the same site. Improving manure nutrient value and recycling nutrients were also important factors. To be able to procure a biogas plant, one has to acquire information on various things from several sources and carefully compare the pieces of information. The better the entrepreneur was familiarized with the issue, the more reliable were the profitability calculations and the estimation of the investment costs. Administrative obstacles addressed by the biogas entrepreneurs interviewed included the current tax system concerning electricity produced in an agricultural biogas plant and used at the farm as well as different classification of manure and manure based digestate in the Finnish agri-environmental support system. Important issues in the biogas plant projects were, for example, achieving sufficient profitability and balance sheet from operation, sufficiently high investment grant, the entrepreneur’s own know-how, good collaboration with authorities, and positive attitudes of stakeholders. The reason for projects to fall through was most often lack of profitability. For example, the investment grant obtained was too low in relation to what was applied for, the incomes were too low or the investment costs increased significantly during the planning phase. To be able to achieve profitability, biogas plants utilizing mainly agricultural substrates must have sufficient and predictable balance from selling electricity and heat and also partly from fertilizers produced from the digestate and gate fees obtained from waste-based materials. The investment cost of biogas plant is very high in relation to turnover, which emphasizes the significance of balance sheet. The interviewed desicion-makers found the future of biogas business positive despite the profitabilityrelated challenges. They believed that in the future, productization of the digestates will be a more important source of income for the biogas plants than energy production. This study indicated that developing energy production support system and supporting research and development on digestate processing as well as the use of recycled fertilizers are key factors needed to increase the number of agricultural biogas plants in Finland. A long-term support policy and sufficiently high support are also prerequisites for this development. Profitability of the biogas plants may be increased also by using indirect policy mechanisms. Examples of operational models and profitability calculations, based on experiences from real Finnish biogas plants, would be of practical help for those planning a biogas plant. New way of thinking, also in administration, which would see biogas plant as an integration of energy production, agriculture, waste management and nutrient recycling, could enhance the development of the biogas sector in Finland. This integrated view would also help consideration of positive environmental benefits of biogas production and use in support systems.