The Letter of Intent will serve as a foundation stone for a future, structured, widely recognised programme of cooperation among all national biomethane registries in Europe. It also serves as an invitation for the other national biomethane registries which have not yet joined the cooperation.
According to the signatories, the establishment of national biomethane registries in every European country, and the broad cooperation among them, will be the first important steps towards the creation of pre-conditions for a future cross border biomethane market within the European gas grid.
The main of cooperation is to create the compatibility between the registries and to set conditions for a mutual acceptance of Guarantees of Origin for biomethane. This requires the definition of a standardised set of data to be exchanged whenever biomethane is transported across borders with the Guarantees of Origin being recognised by counterpart registries in other countries. The resulting document, the “European Biomethane Guarantee of Origin” will contain all the information needed for qualifying imported biomethane as “green” in the receiving country. This in turn will enable cross-border trade and transactions running through the territories of several countries.
The key areas of the intended collaboration will be:
to create the best possible, most efficient conditions for transfer of information related to biomethane transactions among the national biomethane registries,
to establish a harmonised methodology by which the complete information pertaining to biomethane “Guarantees of Origin” is transferred between each registry,
to ensure highest possible compatibility between the national registration systems,
to set the conditions for mutual acceptance of Guarantees of Origin for biomethane (at the start on bilateral, later also on multilateral basis)
Biomethane plays a key role in attempts to create a low-carbon economy in the EU. However, in order to release its full potential, it is vital that it can be traded across national borders. A fully-functioning European biomethane market will be highly dependent on a transparent and reliable system of comprehensive information transfer across national borders, as detailed in the Letter of Intent.
The key requirement of biomethane cross-border trade is that the ”green” property (renewable, environmentally friendly and reducing GHG emissions) of the product biomethane should be recognised by the importing country, and that the gas should be counted towards national quotas or targets of the receiving country. The relevant qualification cannot be provided by the importing country, it must come from the country of production.
Currently biomethane is produced in fifteen European countries in about 230 installations and is injected into the natural gas grid in eleven countries being used as biofuel for transportation in eleven countries
These six signatories are:
Biomethan Register Austria (Austria)
Energinet.dk (Denmark)
Gaz Réseau Distribution France
Biogasregister (Germany)
VSG (Federation of Swiss Gas Industry)
Green Gas Certification Scheme (UK)
For additional information:
Gaz Réseau Distribution France
