Overview of biomethane markets and regulations ... - Green Gas Grids

Introduction
Biomethane is a green gas. The biogas derived from anaerobic digestion (AD) of
organic sources is processed within different gas treatment and upgrading steps to
remove impurities, carbon dioxide and enhance methane content. The resulting
product gas is similar in composition to natural gas – with a benefit of being
considered 100 % renewable.
The market for biomethane varies widely across the European countries. On one
hand, there are so called forerunners like Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany,
Switzerland and Austria, which have fair experience in biomethane to grid injection
technology. More than 170 plants are operating in these countries that upgrade
biogas to biomethane, of which a large proportion is feeding into the public natural
gas grids (Table 1). In all these projects the technology providers gained valuable
experience and are now poised to supply proven technology throughout Europe.
Thus, technology availability is not held as a restricting factor anymore.
The second group of countries still find themselves in information phase. Countries
like Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia and Poland possess excellent agro-economical
conditions for biogas production, but are in the early stage of development of
biogas industry.
Country
Biomethane
plants
Biomethane
plants
feeding the
grid
Biogas
plants
total
(approx.)
Agricultural
Biowaste
(incl.
organic
MSW)
Sewage LFG
Austria 10 7 503 approx. 300 55 134 14
Croatia - - 4 2 - 1 1
France 3 1 283 40 98 74 71
Germany 84 82 8.792 approx. 7.000 92 1.700
Hungary 1 - 58 36 - 14 8
Italy - - 667 approx. 300 32 135 200
Netherlands 13 13 130
Poland - - 219 17 2
approx. 200
Slovakia - - 24 12 - 12 -
UK 2 2 360 60
100 > 200
Sweden 47 8 229 14 23 135 57
Switzerland 17 15 600 140
460
Table 1: Number of biogas and biomethane plants in several
European countries
The prevailing conditions vary considerably across these nations. The support
schemes for biomethane provided by individual government vary strongly - from
gas feed-in tariffs in UK and France, very supportive feed-in tariffs for CHP in
Germany, to mainly market driven developments e.g. in Sweden and Switzerland.
Also the feedstock applied for biogas production also varies as primarily energy
crops in Germany and predominantly organic in Switzerland and Sweden, while the
UK is distinguished by an uptake of high ratio of AD from sewage at waste-water
treatment plants. These variations occur due to different infrastructure and raw
material basis and diverse political framework and goals. Sweden for example does
not have an all-spanning gas grid infrastructure, but instead the country focuses on
direct applications of biomethane such as biofuel. Germany, on the other hand,
focuses on applications in CHP plants, while the Netherlands and UK have
established a well-developed heat market for eco-friendly green gas.
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