Hanover, 21 May (Argus) — Power generation from biogas will rise to over 24TWh in Germany this year, covering around 4pc of the country's electricity demand, biogas association FVB said.
But the growth in installed power generating capacity will continue to slow, FVB predicts. Installed capacity this year will rise by around 177MW, or 5pc, with expansions and retrofitting accounting for the majority of this. Installed biogas capacity grew by 255MW, or 13pc, to 3.35GW last year, compared with an 800MW increase in 2011. Germany's 7,500-plus biogas power plants run on crops or manure.
The slowdown in growth stems from a cut to the country's guaranteed feed-in tariffs from the start of last year. And a continuing debate on curtailing the costs of renewable energy for consumers is deterring investors, which increasingly prefer to build their plants outside Germany, FVB managing director Claudius da Costa Gomez said.
Germany's biogas sector is placing its hope in an amended renewable energy law, which should make it economically worthwhile for the plants to make their generation more flexible. Around a third of Germany's biogas plants directly market their power, although the majority generate base-load electricity to maximise their revenues from feed-in tariffs. It would make more sense to supply power only when needed to balance intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind or photovoltaic electricity, FVB said.
Making operational times at biogas plants more flexible is one of the issues under debate in connection with an overhaul of the renewable energy law, expected at the end of this year. Governing and opposition parties have promised to revamp the law after federal elections on 22 September.
The environment ministry has made it clear that it is in favour of giving biogas power a role as balancing electricity, although it acknowledges that this would be challenging to implement, because of the quantity and small size of plants. Some technology development is still needed for many plants to reach the necessary flexibility, FVB said.
A change in a building law earlier this month, which raised the permissible size of so-called “externally built” biogas plants beyond 2MW, is one step in the right direction, according to FVB. FVB does not expect a boom in larger biogas plants after the law change, because the maximum amount of biogas that plants are allowed to burn — 2.3mn m³/yr ³ — remains the same. But it will enable the existence of relatively large biogas plants that could use up the permissible amount of biogas more flexibly, according to FVB.
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