If you want to learn something about the principle of hope, you should talk to Franz Kirchmeyr. For years he has headed the biogas department in the Austrian Compost & Biogas Association. He is something like the representative of all domestic biogas plant operators. And when he talks about the fact that their number should increase significantly in the future, he vacillates between hope and resignation.
There are currently around 300 biogas plants in Austria. Biowaste, food leftovers, liquid manure, manure and plants are converted into biogas in them. Around 1.7 terawatt hours (TWh) of gas are produced in this way every year. However, only a fraction of this ends up in the gas network. Almost 90 percent of this is converted directly into electricity and heat – in other words, burned.
Feed-in negligible
Only 15 plants in Germany can process biogas in such a way that it chemically corresponds to natural gas and can be fed into the gas network. 136 gigawatt hours of such biomethane were pumped into the gas network last year. This year, too, this amount will be similarly high – or rather low. Domestic natural gas consumption is around 90 TWh per year. The biomethane content is therefore just 0.15 percent.
According to the government program, this share is to increase to five TWh by 2030. In recent months there has also been repeated talk of an expansion to ten TWh by 2030 – not least in view of the gas crisis resulting from the Russian attack on Ukraine. And a year ago, a study commissioned by the Ministry of Climate Protection came to the conclusion that around 20 TWh of biomethane could be produced by 2040 – and only from organic residues.
No push for expansion yet
The new “Service Center for Renewable Gases” will also start work in the coming weeks. On behalf of the Ministry of Climate Protection, the Austrian Energy Agency is to offer information and advice on all aspects of the production and use of renewable gases.
Controlled fermentation
In biogas production, a gas mixture is obtained by fermenting organic substances.
Since this only releases as much CO2 during combustion as the plants have previously taken out of the air, biogas is considered to be largely climate-neutral.
It would therefore be obvious that the events of the past few months have given biogas production a boost. Suddenly, the supply of cheap (Russian) natural gas was no longer considered easy. And while the higher price has so far spoken against biogas for many, the relationship has temporarily turned around in the course of the gas market turbulence this year. Biomethane was sometimes cheaper than fossil fuel.
Lack of legal basis
But anyone who suspected the large expansion of biogas plants was – so far – wrong. There were no major investments this year either. According to Kirchmeyr, this is mainly due to the lack of a legal framework. “We have been working on the legal requirements since 2017. In 2020 we were very close to that finally becoming law. But it didn’t work the last few meters because the two governing parties couldn’t come to an agreement,” says the biogas representative.
Kirchmeyr alludes to the Renewable Energy Expansion Act, which was passed in 2021 after much back and forth – and in which green gas is only marginally dealt with. The complex, as announced by the government made up of the ÖVP and the Greens, should be cast in a separate law. But this does not exist to this day – opinions differ as to why. Last but not least, the domestic gas industry never tires of complaining that the ball is in Leonore Gewessler’s (Green Party) climate protection ministry.
“Intergovernmental negotiation”
The Ministry of Climate Protection “a green gas law was drawn up a long time ago that provides for the gradual development of the biogas potential. That is up to the coalition partner and is therefore being negotiated within the government,” says Lukas Hammer, spokesman for climate protection and energy.
When asked by ORF.at, said coalition partner, the Chancellor’s party ÖVP, only let it be known that “we will not communicate before the negotiations are concluded”. According to the office of ÖVP MP and Farmers’ Union President Georg Strasser, the negotiations would go “well”.
Expansion through quota
It is largely agreed that the law will be based on a quota. Energy suppliers are to be obliged to replace a certain percentage of natural gas with biomethane. This percentage is then expected to increase year after year.
However, the biogas industry fears a lack of planning security. The gas suppliers would only conclude contracts for a maximum of three years. However, such a time horizon is not enough for the construction or financing of new plants. “I have to have a guarantee of at least 15 or 20 years,” says Kirchmeyr. How this should look like is currently still open.
Space heating issue
In addition, the coalition partners are likely to be concerned with another question: where biomethane should be used in the future. The Greens, like environmental protection organizations, argue that green gas (which includes biogas as well as green hydrogen) should primarily be used where gas cannot be easily replaced. That would be some branches of industry or heavy traffic. However, gas – including green gas – should largely disappear from space heating.
The gas industry resists such restrictions. “The gas heating system, the gas stove, the gas power plant, the industrial gas burner and the gas car can be operated 100% with green gas in the future with little effort,” says the website “Future Green Gas”. It is operated by the Association of Gas and Heat Supply Companies (FGW) and the Austrian Association for Gas and Water (ÖVGW).
How deep the coalition rifts run on this issue was recently made clear by the Renewable Heat Act. The law was intended to put the phase-out of fossil fuels in space heating on a legal footing. After much back and forth, it should be decided in December in the National Council. But it did not get to that. This was obviously not only due to the SPÖ, whose vote was needed for the required two-thirds majority, but also to discrepancies within the coalition. According to reports, the economic wing of the ÖVP is said to have once again opposed itself – above all against the planned ban on the construction of new gas heating systems.
Questions of availability and costs
The gas industry likes to point out that large parts of the infrastructure could continue to be used if there were a nationwide switch to green gas. That would help save costs. Another reason for keeping as many heating systems as possible on the gas network is one that the industry is much less willing to put forward: the roughly one million households that currently still heat with gas finance the gas network to a considerable extent. If these disappeared, the costs for the industry, which still needs gas, would rise sharply.
Tank vs plate?
Crucial to the sustainability of biogas are the raw materials that are used for it.
Growing extra crops for production creates the famous tank versus plate conflict. Therefore, in the future, mainly residues and waste will be used.
At the same time, however, the following also applies: If Austria were to actually replace its entire previous natural gas consumption with green gas, large quantities would have to be imported. Even with a focus solely on industry and heavy goods traffic, there would be a considerable gap between production and demand, according to the study “Renewable Gas in Austria 2040” last year. The investigation by the Energy Agency, the University of Leoben and the Energy Institute at the Johannes Kepler University is precisely the study that put the realistic biogas potential by 2040 at 20 TWh.
Critics of green gas in room heating fear that natural gas would then be forced to continue to be used – and warn of a “lock-in effect”. In addition, green gas is always a scarce resource. And the scarcer and more in demand it is, the more expensive it becomes, according to the argument. The industry could therefore also have an interest in space heating being phased out of the gas network – step by step.
Industry waits
In this context, the question can also be asked as to why the industry itself is not promoting the expansion of biogas. The Chamber of Commerce refers to companies in the food industry, for example, that produce their own biogas; the Vorarlberg potato processor Elfer even operates one of the 15 plants in Austria that can feed their biomethane into the gas grid. But the Chamber of Commerce in this country does not know of any industrial companies that conclude contracts with biogas plants.
Two industrial companies negotiated with plant operators about the purchase of biogas this year, says Kirchmeyr. In the end, the negotiations came to nothing in both cases. Among other things, probably because one is still relying on natural gas that will be cheaper again in the future. So the biogas plants are currently stuck with the few existing contracts with state energy suppliers – and the hope that something will happen with the legal basis in the coming year.
