Finland: Biogas combines highest environmental quality with lowest price
The University of Eastern Finland (Lampinen 2015) has published a set of statistics of production and consumption of biogas for transportation applications in Finland during 2014.
These statistics published in September 2015 by as a part of national biogas statistics publication (Huttunen & Kuittinen 2015) show that the environmental quality of biogas consumed as vehicle fuel in 2014 was very high, as it has been before. The distribution of resources used for producing biomethane for filling stations as waste based consisting of biowastes (99.99%) and lignocellulosic plant wastes (0.01%). Energy crops were not used. It means that all biomethane is eligible for double counting in the national renewable energy statistics according to the rules of the RES Directive. Since energy use does not affect nutrient recycling in biogas processes, nutrients could be recycled independently.
As biogas was sold for vehicles only as pure biomethane, it had by far the lowest average lifecycle greenhouse gas intensity of all energy sources available in public filling/charging stations for vehicle use in Finland.
Combination of highest environmental quality and lowest price was complemented by highest technical quality (octane number 130-150) of fuels suitable for Otto engines. Suitability for Otto engine, i.e. the most common and the cheapest vehicle engine, also means that cars able to utilise it are in the same cost range with conventional gasoline and diesel cars in the Finnish market. As a result of extension of the public pure biomethane filling station network, personal renewable energy transition in transportation energy consumption became possible in practice and without financial burdens for about a third of the Finnish population.
Source: CBG100
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