France plans to ramp up biomethane production from agricultural waste in an effort to reduce its reliance on natural gas from Russia, hoping to completely replace Russian fuel with biogas in less than 10 years.
Although small biofuel stations are already supplying hundreds or thousands of French households, the biogas solution is unlikely to provide a quick replacement for supplies from sanctions-hit Russia since the French biogas production is still small.
The biomethane volume they produced for the national network almost doubled in 2021 and was enough to power 362,000 homes.
Gas obtained from agriculture, according to the industry, covered almost 1% of France’s gas consumption needs in 2021 and will increase to at least 2% this year and up to 20% by 2030 – more than France imported from Russia in 2021.
However, having expressed support for EU’s bid to wean itself off Russian gas, French farmers are planning to launch new biofuel production facilities to strengthen the booming activities.
The number of biofuel production facilities in France have surged from just 44 at the end of 2017 to 365 last year with almost three bio-methane production sites on average are going online every week in France.
But Andrea Horbelt, a spokeswoman for the German biogas association, warned that using biogas for electricity is more expensive than solar and wind, and will remain expensive, so they can double the bio-methane production in a matter of years but it certainly won’t come cheap.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the France’s government has also taken several steps to quicken the development of bio-methane.
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