Danish biogas producer NGF Nature Energy A/S has announced that it has entered into a two-year agreement with German automaker Audi AG to replace fossil gas in its European natural gas vehicles (NGV's) with green biomethane from Denmark.
Denmark’s largest biomethane producer NGF Nature Energy A/S has announced that it has entered into an agreement with Germany-headed automaker Audi AG to replace fossil gas in Audi’s natural gas vehicles (NGV’s) in Europe with green biomethane from Denmark. The agreement with Audi runs from 2017 to 2019 and entails supplying green gas certificates for approximately 10 000 Audi NGV’s across Europe.
We are incredibly proud that we have reached an agreement with one of the world’s largest automakers. It is an endorsement of the strategic change we initiated in 2012, where we began to build large-scale biogas plants. Today, we are running four major plants, are building three new ones and are planning another ten plants for the future, said Ole Hvelplund, CEO, Nature Energy in a statement.
Nature Energy converts 140 000 tonnes of food waste and 1 million tonnes of slurry annually to produce 45 million Nm3 biomethane that is injected into the gas grid. According to Hvelplund, its waste-based feedstock with high carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction effect that also prevents methane emissions in agriculture while replacing fossil fuels in transportation are some of the reasons why Audi has chosen to buy its biomethane from Denmark’s largest producer.
NGV’s gaining popularity in Europe
In Denmark, a number of municipalities use biogas for city buses and home care services vehicles with municipalities like Fredericia, Skive and Copenhagen that in recent years have chosen to replace diesel and petrol-powered vehicles with biomethane-fuelled NGV’s. The same trend is seen in the rest of Europe, where today there are over 2 million NGV’s on the roads.
More and more people are seeing the benefits of using biogas for transport, and Denmark has a unique opportunity to become one of Europe’s leading biogas producers. Today there are more than 2 million gas-fuelled cars in Europe and by replacing gasoline and diesel with green biogas, we can seriously reduce CO2 emissions in the transport sector, said Hvelplund.
Audi has noted the same trend with the advantage of NGV’s being the long range that is still a problem for most electric cars (EV’s). However, Audi is said to launch a long-range EV next year. In Denmark, EU requirements for the 2020 – 2030 period mean that the country will have to reduce its CO2 emissions in the transport sector by 39 percent compared with 2005 levels.
Audi is focusing heavily on NGV’s and has recently introduced the new Audi A5 in a gas-powered version – A5 g-tron. In Denmark, we are following developments closely, but whether gas-powered cars will also be successful here depends largely on the political framework and the further development of the distribution network, said Morten Troest, Sales Manager, Audi Denmark.
