Cooperation
Supported by national support mechanisms and frameworks, the production and use of biomethane has increased significantly in many European countries. Biomethane is produced in the following European countries: AT, CH, BE, DE, DK, EE, ES, FR, FI, HU, IE, IC, IT, LT, LX, NL, NO, SE, UK. The European Biomethane Map shows the distribution of 729 European biomethane producing plants (data as of 2020). Germany has the highest number of biomethane plants (232), followed by France (131) and the UK (80).
The following European countries have national biomethane registries that register the injection of biomethane into the national gas grid and transparently map ownership transfers of biomethane energy volumes: AT, BE, CH, DE, DK, EE, FR, IE, LT, NL, UK. Some of these registries allow cross-border ownership transfers via bilateral cooperation agreements: AT <-> DE, DE <-> DK, DE <-> UK.
The goal of the European Commission is the standardisation and harmonisation of certificates for renewable energy for international transfer for specific application areas of biomethane. Only with the help of effective cooperation and projects on international level can biomethane make the important contribution to achieving Europe-wide climate and energy goals.
The cross-border ownership transfer of biomethane certificates has until now taken place on the basis of individual agreements. Through bilateral cooperation agreements, AGCS pursues the goal of enabling Austrian market participants to allocate energy volumes from biomethane for specific marketing paths for biomethane and to exchange biomethane certificates with the established, national biomethane registers in Europe. AGCS as operator of the Biomethan Register Austria is active in several cooperation projects and brings in many years of experience in the fields of settlement concepts as well as technical systems and know-how of established and liberalised gas markets and their balancing models.
Together with biomethane registries from seven European countries, AGCS has been developing a concept for international exchanges of biomethane certificates. The ERGaR Certificate of Origin (CoO) Scheme facilitates the transfer of biomethane certificates between participating national registries, who are responsible for the issuance of biomethane certificates for renewable gases that have been injected into the natural gas network in their countries. The ERGaR Certificate of Origin (CoO) is an electronic document that records information about renewable gas certificates in a harmonised manner although they were issued according to the market rules of different national registries. The ERGaR CoO represents a standarised data format which was harmonised by the collaborating national registries over the past years. Each participating registry is able to read and process the datased of the ERGaR CoO. This is a major milestone for the integration of biomethane into the European energy market, as it allows standardised cross-border transfers of biomethane certificates.