Biogas success stories in northern Europe
In Oslo, Norway, city buses are to run on biogas from food waste, Finland is rolling out biogas cogeneration units, and a number of countries have come together to help fund applied research.
Norway is the last remaining oil exporting country in Europe as the UK's production continues to drop. Nonetheless, the city of Oslo has announced that it plans to switch over all of its city buses to biogas made from food waste. Impressively, a third of the city's buses already reportedly run on biogas from city sewage, but the potential is available to produce the equivalent of 4 million liters of diesel each year. A new biogas plant will go into operation next year for this purpose, and it will also produce fertilizer for local farmers.
In similar news, Finnish investment firm Taaleritehdas plans to set up 5 to 7 biogas plants over the next two years, and they will also produce biogas from food waste, sewage, industrial byproducts, and agricultural waste from within a radius of 150-200 kilometers. The asset managers say they detected demand for such plants in their research conducted over the past few years.
Finally, ERA-NET Bioenergy, a network of EU countries originally set up in 2004 with EU funding to promote applied bioenergy research, stayed in business in 2011 without EU funding and is currently calling for submissions for research and development projects devoted to innovative biogas production and sustainable energy crops. The maximum funding for a single company per project is reportedly 300,000 euros. The deadline is May 11 for pre-proposals and August 20 for full proposals; more details are provided at the organization's website for the Joint Call.
The biogas sector recently also had reason to rejoice in North America when president Obama included biogas in his strategy to tackle the country's energy problems. US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced this month that his agency has earmarked five million dollars for a new biogas facility in Oakley, Kansas, which also use organic waste as a feedstock. (Craig Morris)
