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15/05/2012 - Growing industry commitment to NGVs – Westport and Swagelok also request to join NGVA Europe’s Board of Directorsmore

30/04/2012 - EP plenary supports extension of tax benefits for natural gas and biomethane as a transport fuelmore

26/04/2012 - Linde, Bohlen & Doyen and Gasrec request to take seats on NGVA Europe’s Board of Directorsmore

28/03/2012 - Final GasHighWay Seminar in Brussels proved to be true successmore

13/03/2012 - Energy Taxation proposal strongly debated in parliament and changes requested - low taxes for the next 10 years, and up to 50% energy tax relief on Natural Gas from 2023 until 2030more

11/03/2012 - Green Gas Grids: NGVA europe participates in new EU project to boost the biomethane marketmore

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“Future Transport Fuels” report includes NGVA Europe Fact Sheet

CH4_front A comprehensive NGVA Europe Fact Sheet on the "Biomethane production potential in the EU-27 + EFTA countries, compared with other biofuels" was annexed to the Report of the European Expert Group on Future Transport Fuels, which was published by the European Commission (DG MOVE) on Tuesday, 25th January.

page 35 of the Expert Group report states:

Bio-methane versus liquid biofuel production from the same biomass source has to be assessed under various aspects: optimisation of biomass yield per area of land, optimisation of energy yield, optimisation of CO2 savings, and optimisation of economics. By-products from the same biomass may be considered as well. Large differences in yield have been identified in the case of maize [18]: The bioethanol yield alone is 81 GJ/ha, about half of the yield achievable for bio-methane of 176 GJ/ha. A quantitative analysis by NGVA Europe comes to a similar result (Annex 2a).

Land surface efficiency for liquid biofuels is clearly lower than for biogas

Land_efficiency_of_different_biofuels

NGVA Europe made an analyses of various available studies on this subject and used the NGVA Europe Position Paper "Biomethane - The renewable natural gas" as main basis of the Fact Sheet. It estimates "for the EU 27 the biomethane potential to be approx. 5,47–8,9EJ (131–214Mtoe) in 2020. The given numbers can be taken as a theoretical maximum reference based on available biomass resources in Europe (energy crops, ligneous waste, wet biomass without urban waste, etc.). Taking into account current infrastructure conditions and different biomethane interests in the various European countries, reaching 10% of the mentioned total biomethane potential is feasible for the EU 27 and EFTA countries in 2020. This potential includes biomethane produced though biological and the thermo chemical conversion process."

The Commission urges 'concrete progress' on energy efficiency in order to reach the EU's 2020 targets, a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a 20% increase in the proportion of renewables in the energy supply, a minimum use of 10% biofuels and a 20% improvement in energy efficiency, all compared with 1990 levels. Since the RES Directive says that "the contribution made by biofuels produced from wastes, residues, non-food cellulosic material, and ligno-cellulosic material shall be considered to be twice that made by other biofuels", gaseous biomethane made from landfill, biomass residues, sewage sludge or manure would be the easiest and quickest way to achieve the renewable transport target.

The member states have expressed their strategies to comply with the 20-20-20 targets in their Renewable Energy Action Plans, which are publicly available on:
http://ec.europa.eu/energy/renewables/transparency_platform/action_plan_en.htm