ROMANIA: Engie is to obtain the biomethane supply license in Romania
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The French group Engie, increasingly involved in the biomethane segment in Europe, a green gas that it sees as part of the energy transition, would receive the supply license in Romania as well.
“Draft decision and report regarding the granting of the license for carrying out the activity of supplying biogas/biomethane to the economic operator ENGIE ROMANIA S.A.” This is one of the decisions that would be adopted in the upcoming meeting of the Regulation Committee of ANRE, on November 5.
Engie, a company active in Romania mainly in the natural gas distribution and supply segment, has increased its presence in the area of electricity production from renewable sources, now having a portfolio of 211 MW with a target of 1,000 MW by 2030 . but it is also concerned with the use of so-called “green gases” in the energy transition, including biomethane.
In 2023, Engie has set itself the goal of producing 10 TWh of biomethane per year across Europe. “An essential contribution to the decarbonisation of gas, which, together with the electron, plays an indispensable role in the success of the energy transition”, said the company. In just one year, the Group has already doubled its biomethane capacity to approximately 1.2 TWh per year. Engie has acquired 7 new biogas plants in Europe: four new plants in England, two in the Netherlands and one in Belgium, most recently. “In parallel, Engie is working on improving the performance of its facilities and developing innovations such as biomethane liquefaction – which will be implemented on its various European sites,” the company announced last month, when it bought a unit in Belgium.
Engie officials have been talking about the future use of biomethane in Romania, this having the advantage that it does not require any modification of the current natural gas infrastructure.
“At the moment we have a problem of hesitation. We probably also had this policy to wait and see what happens, we have natural gas, first let’s exploit it, let’s do the electrification, that biomethane and hydrogen will come later. Unfortunately, we have to move in parallel because, otherwise, a lot of European funds are available for technologies like biomethane or hydrogen today. And if you don’t take them today, if you wait until tomorrow, until it becomes a proven technology, it might be too late for those subsidies”, said Cristian Buzan, deputy general manager at Engie Romania, at the end of February. He said that based on the developments of other technologies in the renewables sector in the past, it is possible that hydrogen or biomethane projects, which are not economically feasible now, will become.
“It always involved a cost. If we look at 2009-2010, solar panels cost 11-12 times more, wind turbines 4-5 times, batteries did not even exist. Technology has advanced, costs have come down. At the moment we are moving towards hydrogen, biomethane. At the moment, from what we have studied, there is no stand-alone business case for these technologies, we are talking about scalability, not pilot projects, but they will come. I’m not saying to put the desire before the means, but simply we all have to work, companies, governments, population, to go towards this desired”.
