Pipes and pumps at Denmark’s biogas plants will be checked starting this week to reduce the leakage at biogas plants reported to average 2.5% of the methane produced.
On average, Danish biogas plants leaked an average of 2.5% of the methane they produced, the country’s energy agency said in a 2021 report – the largest on leaking biogas plants to date.
Danish law now requires the implementation of control measurements to determine the density of Danish biogas plants. Following the monitoring of plants nationwide, the plants that do not correct their leakages will risk fines and a loss of state aid.
“There could well be a small leak. So we want to stop it, if that’s the case,” the operations manager at Sønderborg Forsyning, Henning Waldemar – the first plant to be checked – told Denmark Radio.
Because methane is harmful to the climate, the Danish Energy Agency estimated that methane emissions should not exceed 1%, said Kristian Havskov Sørensen, Chief Consultant at the Danish Energy Agency. “That’s why the ambition is to get as far down as technically possible,” he added.
According to the energy agency’s report, municipal biogas plants, including wastewater treatment plants, also have issues retaining methane and lose an average of 7.7% per methane produced.
The agency said that losses between 8-10% cancel out the climate benefits from producing biogas.
(Charles Szumski | EURACTIV.com)
Source: euractiv.com
