Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
18.3
With a share of 60% renewables and a total market of 1228GWh in
2011, Sweden has the greatest sales of biomethane in the world, both in
absolute and relative terms, despite only representing a hundredth of
the total Swedish road transport market.
system for renewable electricity in Sweden is a magnitude lower than that in
Germany, which specifically targets electricity production at farm-scale level
from anaerobic digestion. The energy policy instruments with regard to
renewable energy in Sweden are weaker and more general in character
compared to those of, for example, Denmark and Germany, leading to a
situation where more ready-at-hand and cost-efficient solutions such as
centralized co-generation of heat and electricity from low-cost forestry
residues are preferable to smaller scale biogas CHP applications with more
limited profitability.
The Swedish NGV market had its starting point in the early 1990s when
the gas companies, looking for new market segments partnered with
municipalities who wished to convert their bus fleets to gas in order to
diminish local environmental pollution effects and, later, to mitigate climate
change through waste-based biomethane production schemes. The market
growth was incentivized by state programme investment funds for the
municipalities, which were in effect for more than a decade. Out of
5 billion SEK of available funds, 12% was allocated to biogas projects. With
the aid of the state programme funding, municipalities without access to
natural gas had the opportunity to do the same thing as the grid-connected
municipalities who had started using natural gas in their city buses. These
prime moving municipalities, in their turn, took the chance to fulfill their
environmental goals by implementing biogas upgrading technology and
using a mix of biomethane and natural gas in their vehicles. Thus, the
growth of the NGV market also led to a steady growth of upgraded biogas
utilization, as illustrated in Fig. 18.3. by the volumes of biomethane
outstripping the volumes of natural gas utilized. In 2009, the biomethane
share reached a peak of 60% of the total market; this level was maintained
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