Speaking at the UK’s first biomethane and gas vehicle conference this week (June 5), ADBA’s chief executive Charlotte Morton said that 60% of the potential feedstock in the future could come from food waste and 26% from crops.

“Clearly food waste policy, or waste collection, is critical to us extracting that feedstock and making it available for AD operators to convert to biomethane,” she said.

Highlighting the barriers to delivering biomethane for transport, Morton cited financial incentives as one of the biggest issues to resolve. She said that because of the way that incentives worked most of the UK’s AD plants were generating electricity and heat.

“If we want to increase biomethane directly into transport rather than the grid, there needs to be an adjustment both of the level of the renewable transport fuel obligation and the energy equivalents between biodiesel and biomethane,” she said.

Morton also said that further work needed to be done to gain greater recognition for biomethane certificates.

Drawing on this point, CEO of Green Gas Trading, Grant Ashton, outlined his company’s biomethane certification scheme, which has been designed to provide the biomethane industry with the means of certifying and trading the ‘green’ or ‘bio’ value of biomethane.

The scheme applies to biomethane that is injected into the gas grid and liquefied or compressed for use as a transport fuel.

“I think entities wishing to decarbonise transport fleets will be one of the key buyers of the biomethane certificates,” he said.

“The wide-scale adoption of gas vehicles is one of the key facilitators of UK climate change goals as well as addressing air quality issues in the main cities.”

Nick Warburton

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