EBA joins European Working Group on biogas safety
Biogas production could be even safer with harmonised guidelines on good practices at the European level.
To improve our understanding of accidents related to biogas production in Europe, EBA supports a European Working Group (EWG) on Biogas Safety and Regulation that aims to build a database of these accidents and issue publications about good practises in Europe in order to prevent them. A meeting was held hosted by ENGIE Lab CRIGEN research centre this December, with representatives from France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and Italy. Key subjects of the discussions included the Machinery Directive (2006/42/EC), the ATEX Directive (2014/34/EU) and evolution of the ISO TC 255.
Biogas production is a safe business: on more than 17,000 European biogas plants, only a few accidents happen every year. These accidents are very often mechanical (86% of accidents in Germany), and only a few are deadly (zero cases in Germany in 2016). Although very low, the number of accidents could be reduced even more due to the increasing interest in biogas safety in Europe.
