biogas not gazprom

A recent academic study of the "institut für energetik und umwelt of the university of leipzig", financed by the german green party and by a local utility, claims that euroland has the potential to produce enough biogas in order to be able to fully substitute russian gas imports. and that this could be done by 2020.

the central idea is to promote growth and thermal conversion of energy crops alongside the existing gas pipeline network. the resulting biogas would, after upgrading, be inserted into the gas grid and further delivered to industrial and retail clients.

of course, such a development would be of interest to agribusiness as well as many companies from the energy industry, mostly those already involved in the (german) biogas market.

and the whole thing would take off, if only biogas production and inserations into the existing gas network would be equally promoted with feed-in tarifs as already known in germany for electricity from renewable power sources...

even being a "biofuel", biogas makes environmentally much sense compared to other biofuels such as ethanol or biodiesel. first, because it is not wasted as transport fuel but would be mainly used for heating and industrial process purposes (with substantially higher energy efficiency rates) and secondly, because as already mentioned, biogas and associated conversion (gasification) technology has the best environmental bottom line as regards net CO2 emissions (as more and more studies conclude, for example this one benchmarking biofuels against gasoline: EMPA 3.2 MB)


meaning: all fuels within the green area are environmentally speaking performing better in comparison to gasoline. gaseous biofuels made out of waste products as well as wood are the big winners.

read for yourself (in german). here and here
.