Eurogas: ‘In 2050, 76% of gas could be renewable’
Euractiv interviewed Beate Raabe, Secretary General of Eurogas, ahead of its Annual Conference taking place on 27 October.
In her interview, she stresses the benefits of biogas and biomethane for the European energy mix: “There are lots of sources from which you can produce biogas – manure, sewage and waste, whether agricultural waste or municipal waste. We have millions of tonnes of waste in Europe and a lot of that would be suitable to be turned into biogas and biomethane. So it’s a great opportunity to contribute to the circular economy and solve the issue of heaps of waste that municipalities have to deal with“.
The advantages of the “Power-to-Gas” technology are also presented: “You can use the excess electricity of wind and solar that would have to be curtailed otherwise at times of oversupply to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. And then you obtain hydrogen as a gas. This is called ‘power-to-gas’ “. Few investments and infrastructure upgrades are needed, “because you take the electricity out of the local grid, run it through the power-to-gas plant and the gas goes straight into the existing gas grid“.
About the EU legislation, she welcomes the Commission proposal to apply guarantees of origins also for renewable gas, and calls for an equal treatment between renewable electricity and renewable gas, in terms of subsidies.
Ms Raabe points out at the great potential of renewable gas. She quotes a study by the University of Athens which has a scenario where, in 2050, there would be about the same demand for gas as today, but 76% of that gas would be renewable.
She concludes that the biogas and biomethane sectors will not face the issues encountered by biofuels (land use change, food prices, or deforestation), as they are based on waste: “You won’t run out of waste because you will always have agricultural waste, municipal waste, or animal waste”.
Source: Euractiv
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