Biogas and Biomethane in the Polish Energy and Fuel Mix

Panel partner: Unia Producentów i Pracodawców Przemysłu Biogazowego i Biometanowego

Poland should be a biogas and biomethane power. We have 150 million tons of bio-waste available in the country annually: from agricultural production, animal breeding and the agri-food industry, which is a substrate for agricultural biogas. We also have huge potential for sewage treatment plants and landfills, which is a potential for sewage and waste biogas. We should have roughly as many biogas plants as municipalities in the country, and we have approximately as many as poviats. Compared to 20,000 European (including 10,000 German) biogas plants and over a thousand biomethane plants, we are an underdeveloped country in terms of biogas and biomethane. At the same time, an energy transformation is taking place in Poland, which involves the conversion of conventional coal-based energy into the energy of the future based on low-emission sources: nuclear and renewable energy sources (RES). Among renewable energy sources, electricity and heat obtained from biogas are unique because they are not dependent on the weather, but are stable and controllable. Moreover, the energy function of biogas plants is parallel to the utilization function, and therefore the environmental function: biogas plants absorb harmful emissions into the atmosphere.