Biogas market

Biogas market in EU is relatively large. There are more than 10 000 biogas installations of various sizes, with various technologies and with different objectives. There are some countries in EU where biogas is extremely popular and some with virtually no biogas activity.

Other strong biogas nations are Italy and Spain, while nations with the lowest biogas penetration are Romania and Bulgaria.

Most countries need to apply considerable efforts to foster the development of anaerobic digestion, through incentives and also by lifting regulatory barriers. The most promising countries are France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary followed by Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Romania (EurObserv’ER, “Biogas barometer,” 2012).

Biogas energy recovery for both electricity and heat application has increased in the European Union. New markets are starting to emerge in its footsteps, but the economic crisis and regulatory restrictions do not auger well for their expansion. 35.9 TWh of biogas electrical power was produced in 2011 in the European Union. The number of sites does not give us proper view on the market size. Some countries have large centralised plants (Sweden), others have many smaller agricultural biogas plants and decentralised system (Germany, Austria). Market size is commonly expressed by Installed electric capacity at biogas plants.

We are estimating that a fair proportion of all biogas installations meet necessary requirements to use our technology. The most important requirements include: a well defined process, agricultural and food waste substrates and availability of the appropriate land at appropriate (nearby) location. Legislative requirements will also have to be met. By using the above criteria, we can estimate the number of qualified potential customers in EU to at least 2000.