Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and trade. One major barrier for a European market for biomethane lies in
the diversity of national countries' support schemes. Another barrier for
international trade is caused by limitation of support schemes to domestic
production. For example, the German Renewable Energy Sources Act
(Erneuer-bare Energien Gesetz (EEG)) regulates explicitly that only
biomethane that has been fed in within Germany is eligible for support.
The main market drivers for biomethane in European countries are
subsidies such as feed-in tariffs (usually for CHP or heat applications) or
quota regulations (most commonly used for biofuels). Green gas products
addressing eco-sensitive private households or industry players are
becoming more and more established all over Europe.
A rising natural gas price might also be a possible future driver. So far
though, biomethane is not competitive with natural gas. In Germany,
production costs for biomethane are roughly double those of fossil natural
gas. The German Federal Network Agency reports average production costs
of biomethane of 6.2 cents/kWh (BNetzA, 2011).
Many European countries have set more or less explicit targets for
biomethane as part of their overall targets for reaching 20% renewable
energy in the total energy mix by 2020. Germany has announced explicit
targets for biomethane feed-in in the law regulating access to the German
natural gas grid, 'Gasnetzzugangsverordnung' (GasNZV). This law also
enables access to the gas grid for biomethane production facilities. The
target mentioned here is to replace 6% of national gas consumption by the
year 2020 and 10% by 2030. The numbers were defined in absolute energy
values to be independent from the nation's natural gas consumption. The
target was therefore set to 6 billion Nm 3 per year (about 60 TWh/y) by 2020,
and 10 billion Nm 3 per year (about 100 TWh/y) by 2030. Of the 2020 goal,
only 4.5% had been achieved at the end of 2010 (BNetzA, 2011). It seems
fairly impossible to be reached at the time of writing - however, it has never
been officially revoked. According to the GasNZV, the costs for setting up
feed-in facilities have to be paid mostly by the grid operator; part of the
costs can be allocated to all German gas grid operators. The goals of some
other EU countries are as follows.
￿ ￿ ￿ ￿ ￿ ￿
The Netherlands has formulated a target for biomethane feed-in of
202 ktoe (2.3 TWh/y) for 2015 and 582 ktoe (6.8 TWh/y) for 2020 in their
National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP). The Netherlands is
the only country mentioning a target for biomethane feed-in in their
NREAP (Beurskens et al., 2011).
.
France is able to replace 2% of the natural gas circulating inside the
French gas grid by biomethane by 2020 according to an estimation of a
biomethane project manager from GrDF (Gaz reseau distribution
France, the French natural gas grid operator). This corresponds to 2.8
.
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