Over the next five years, 22 partners from nine European countries will join forces in EU-funded project BIOMETHAVERSE, which is designed to diversify the technology basis for biomethane production in Europe, to reduce production costs and to contribute to the uptake of biomethane technologies.
Co-funded by the EU, the project will support the bloc's scale-up of biomethane production to 35bcm by 2030, as proposed by the REPowerEU. In 2021, Europe's total biomethane production totalled 3.5bcm, and is expected to increase in the coming years.
By 2030, BIOMETHAVERSE is intended to boost the current biomethane production by 66%. Upscaling to this degree could enable 113 Mt CO2eq GHG savings in Europe, which is similar to the current GHG emissions of Belgium.
To achieve this, five innovative biomethane production pathways will be developed in five European countries: France, Greece, Italy, Sweden and Ukraine.
The project’s production routes cover one or a combination of thermochemical, electro-biochemical and biological production methodologies.
As a starting point, four demonstration plants use conventional anaerobic digestion (AD), and one uses conventional gasification.
The project is intended to enable and encourage different energy sectors to work together.
In BIOMETHAVERSE’s demonstrators, CO2 effluents from AD or gasification and other intermediate products are combined with renewable hydrogen or renewable electricity to increase overall biomethane production.
The project therefore optimises and modernises the function of the energy system as a whole.
BIOMETHAVERSE’s innovations also aim to ensure that biomethane reaches gas grid quality standards at affordable production prices, allowing the scale-up of biomethane production in Europe.
Today, the production cost of biomethane ranges from €55/MWh to €110/MWh, depending on feedstock, technology and plant scale.
The project is expecting to reduce biomethane production costs by 44%. In order to maximise the impact of the innovations, all partners are committed to ensuring the replicability and upscaling of the demonstrated production pathways while guaranteeing swift market access to the technologies.
In addition to the environmental benefits, BIOMETHAVERSE will also contribute to support the renewable energy sector in reaching the necessary workforce.
By 2030, the project is expected to create 294,000 additional jobs. The biogas and biomethane industries are already responsible for 220,000 jobs today.
EU-funded initiative to “enhance European biomethane potential by 66%”
