Poland's Ekobenz has agreed a partnership that gives LPG distribution company UGI International exclusive rights to its bio-LPG production.
Ekobenz converts organic material in industrial waste into bio-LPG and bio-gasoline, or BG100, which can be used as a drop-in biofuel at up to 85pc of gasoline, according to the company. It already supplies the latter to a global energy company, and will deliver the first bio-LPG from its production facility in Bogumiłow, Poland, to UGI's facilities in Gothenburg, Sweden in coming weeks, UGI said.
UGI will sell business-to-business using its subsidiaries in the Nordics at first — Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden — where there is a developed market and growing demand for bio-LPG. The agreement allows UGI to sell to any of the companies in its European portfolio.
"The proprietary technology employed by Ekobenz produces very high-quality products at a moderate cost, paving the way for large-scale, commercial production which can be easily expanded in Europe," UGI vice president for business development Neil Murphy said.
It will start its roll-out in Sweden, where "the government has shown a strong commitment to a sustainable future with their latest contribution to the green transition with the newly introduced tax exemption on biofuels," UGI said.
Several distributors including UGI already offer bio-LPG, but until now the only commercially viable source came as a byproduct from hydrotreating vegetable oils (HVO) to make biodiesel. Ekobenz is the first company in the European market to commercialise production of bio-LPG from bioethanol. For now, Ekobenz can produce 22,000 t/yr of advanced biofuel, which includes a proportion of bio-LPG. UGI is focused on expansion but said that quantities will be communicated when development plans have been finalised.
"This is one of many options we are currently pursuing on the path to securing the production of bio-LPG," it said. "The bio market is young and emerging and we cannot afford at this stage to omit any perceived opportunities.
"HVO is very well established but with an increasing demand for the feedstock it is believed cost may escalate considerably. Bioethanol is becoming a strong second as a proven liquid feedstock and hence represents a healthy medium-term future," UGI said. "As with many other emerging products and services we would expect stability to arrive in the next few years.
"Slight premiums [to conventional LPG] will be unavoidable initially, but the important point is that we are able to distribute the green molecules that better align with the customers' requirements," it said.
Only around 200,000 t/yr of bio-LPG is produced globally, compared with nearly 320mn t/yr of LPG consumption. Bio-LPG is chemically identical to conventional LPG, and works in existing LPG infrastructure without any modification needed.
