Building a Greener Future: Annette Kroll discusses ENGIE’s Renewable Gas Strategy
Currently operating 38 biomethane plants across France, the UK, and the Netherlands, ENGIE aims to ramp up production significantly with ambitious plans to reach 10 TWh by 2030. With a dedicated investment budget of 3 billion euros, ENGIE is committed to reducing Europe’s carbon footprint and enhancing energy resilience. We spoke with Annette Kroll, Head of Regulation & Advocacy at ENGIE, about ENGIE’s biomethane activities and ambitions for the renewable gas sector.
Introduction of ENGIE
ENGIE is a global reference in low-carbon energy and services, striving daily to accelerate the transition towards a carbon-neutral economy through reduced energy consumption and more environmentally friendly solutions. ENGIE is committed to achieving Net Zero Carbon by 2045 across all three scopes. Our strategy is underpinned by a vision: the alliance of the electron and the molecule. To implement this vision, ENGIE has earmarked growth investment of 22 to 25 billion euros for 2023-2025, to be allocated to renewables power, energy solutions, the development of renewable gases, and battery storage projects.
Tell us more about the new business unit ENGIE just launched. Why is it important?
We launched our new business unit, “ENGIE Renewable Gases Europe”, about one year ago to consolidate all renewable gas activities into a single managerial entity. This milestone significantly strengthens our ambitions to develop green gases. The entity focuses on biomethane from anaerobic digestion but also covers new technologies.
Today, we own and operate 38 biomethane plants in France, the UK and the Netherlands, with a total production capacity of more than 1 TWh. Additionally, we are developing our “Salamandre” project in the port of Le Havre, which aims to industrialise a new production technology for renewable gas through the gasification of solid feedstocks.
How is ENGIE ensuring the sustainability of its biomethane production processes?
The environmental, social, and economic sustainability of our projects is a key concern for us. We place great emphasis on partnerships and the involvement of local communities, including the local population, local authorities, the agricultural ecosystem, and local industrials.
We have more than 500 farmers as partners and recently launched a survey to allow them to evaluate our cooperation in France. The outcome shows great satisfaction, which was a pleasant surprise, as industrial players are sometimes viewed with skepticism in rural environments. 70% of our farmer partners said they would engage with ENGIE again. Those who would not re-engage cited various reasons, such as planning to retire soon.
In terms of environmental sustainability, our larger plants are all RED-certified. Currently, we predominantly use waste from agriculture, the agri-food industry, and municipalities. We have committed to ensuring that the share of food and feed crops remains minimal (not exceeding a 1-digit percentage) as we expand our capacities and enter new countries. Finally, we work with farmers to enhance sustainable farming practices, such as returning nutrients to the soil via digestate and implementing intermediary cropping.
What are ENGIE’s ambitions for biomethane in the mid-term?
We aim to achieve a production capacity of 10 TWh by 2030 in Europe and have dedicated an investment budget of 3 billion euros to this goal.
Why are we doing this? Because we are convinced that biomethane can make a substantial contribution to Europe’s decarbonisation and renewable energy targets. It will also help to create a more resilient energy system, reducing dependency on imports and enhancing the system integration of variable renewable power sources. We firmly believe in the complementarity of green electrons and green molecules.
In the next legislature, climate regulations will be revised. What topics would you like policymakers to discuss?
One of the debates in the next legislative term will be Europe’s 2040 decarbonisation target. We hope that the contribution of biomethane will be properly taken into account. This is an opportunity to introduce more specific and effective target(s) underpinned by market-based mechanisms to promote biomethane and other renewable gases. Strong targets are important to create long-term visibility for our sector.
Moreover, there remains work to be done to fully implement a European market for biomethane and remove technical and political barriers. Non-EU countries like the UK and Ukraine should also be connected and able to trade in this market.
Finally, we see topics “beyond energy” that need to be discussed at European level. How can we mobilise additional feedstock such as intermediary crops? What is the right framework to better valorise by-products such as biogenic CO2 and digestate?
We count on such discussions to happen with a pragmatic, market-friendly, and technology-open mindset.
