Country Report Summary 2013

Task 37 Biogas Country Overview

Spring 2014

Summary

Biogas production in the IEA Bioenergy Task 37 member countries is clearly dominated by Germany with more than 9000 biogas plants. No other member country today has more than 1000 biogas plants and only UK has more than 500 plants except for Germany, according to the available data. Around 0.5-2 TWh of biogas is produced annually in most countries except for UK and Germany where the production is several times larger. In UK 10 TWh of energy (mainly electricity) was produced from the biogas during 2012 and in Germany the amount of energy generated was 40 TWh (mainly electricity).

The biogas produced is mainly used for generation of heat and electricity in most countries with exceptions for Sweden and Switzerland where approximately half of the produced biogas is used as vehicle fuel. Many countries, such as Denmark, Germany and South Korea, among others, show initiatives and interest in increasing the share of the biogas to be used as a vehicle fuel in the near future.

Financial support systems are very different from country to country. Various systems with feed-in tariffs, investment grants and tax exemptions exist. A clear correlation between the financial support system and the way biogas is utilised can be seen in the Task 37 member countries. In UK and Germany with feed-in tariffs for electricity have led to that most of the biogas is used to produce electricity, while the system with tax exemption in Sweden favours the utilisation of the biogas as a vehicle fuel.

Figure 14 below shows the country where facilities are located and technology used for the 276 biogas upgrading units that have been identified by IEA Bioenergy Task 37 at the time of publication of this report.