Today, the Biomethane Industrial Partnership (BIP), launched with the support of the European Commission in September 2022, publishes its first reports during the first edition of the European Biomethane Week ‘Countdown to 2030: from targets to action’.
The BIP calls for action to dramatically accelerate project development and investments in biomethane in the next two to three years if Europe is to achieve the target to produce 35 billion cubic metres (bcm) of sustainable biomethane by 2030, as set by the European Commission in the RePowerEU Plan of May 2022.
See the BIP reports on ‘A vision of how to accelerate biomethane project development’ and ‘Accelerating permitting procedures for biomethane’.
Opening today’s BIP event, Maive Rute, Deputy Director General of the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, stressed that “Europe won’t achieve the 35 bcm target by 2030 if we rely on a business-as-usual scenario. What we need is steep acceleration. Project development takes at least two years, and permits can easily take another two to three years. 2030 is tomorrow.”
Task Force 2 of the BIP has investigated key factors that can accelerate biomethane project development and investments in Europe. According to the BIP, going from the current EU production of approx. 4 bcm to 35 bcm by 2030 will require additional production capacities in almost all EU countries and €83 billion in investments in 5,000 new production installations. For this to happen, project developers and investors must see a clear, positive business case for biomethane production capacities in all countries.
The BIP Task Force 2 has identified three essential pillars to ensure such a positive business case: first, effective incentives because the current prices of gas and CO2 are not sufficient to cover the production costs of all biomethane plants. The BIP identifies good practices for different markets, depending on their current level of biomethane production and use; second, access to a broad market of end-users, and the BIP identifies benefits and hurdles for the use of biomethane in various sectors; and third, access to the EU internal market for biomethane, while the BIP identifies several barriers to cross-border trade of biomethane in the EU, for example, restrictions linked to national subsidies schemes. The report on permitting procedures complements this perspective by analysing the barriers that often hinder effective and swift permitting procedures and identifies good practices for streamlining these procedures and thereby accelerating biomethane projects.
The reports, published today, are a first step toward building a common understanding in Europe on the best ways to accelerate projects and investments in biomethane. All interested stakeholders are welcome to further contribute to and engage in this work.
More information
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secretariat
bip-europe [dot] eu (secretariat[at]bip-europe[dot]eu)
Details
- Publication date
- 26 October 2023
- Author
- Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs