Netherlands-headed Bright Biomethane, a subsidiary of bioenergy technology specialists HoSt, has announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership agreement with Barbados-based Biogen Biotechnologies Inc., to promote and further develop biogas upgrading technology and biomethane production in Barbados.
to promote and develop biomethane production in Barbados (photo courtesy Bright Biomethane).
An island in the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean, Barbados has a population of over 284 000 inhabitants. Due to its remote location, the focus of renewable energy policies has been on solar power. However, the country faces many issues related to waste and waste management.
According to the World Bank, the country has one of the world’s highest municipal solid waste (MSW) generation rates –4.75 kg of MSW per capita/per day. This translates into over 1 300 tonnes of waste per day, of which 70 percent is organic.
According to Bright Biomethane, this presents a significant opportunity as currently, all waste in Barbados is handled by private contractors with most of it ending up on government-owned landfills. This puts Barbados at a great advantage – by using sustainable and smart solutions and technologies for converting municipal organic waste into energy, and by expanding the feedstock base to include other organic materials such as seaweed, sea moss, and organic industrial waste, the island could benefit from an extended biogas production network that could be used for electricity production.
Biomethane-to-grid
However, the biogas can also be upgraded to biomethane and injected into the gas grid or compressed to bio-CNG and utilized as a transportation fuel. In February 2018, Barbados Minister of Energy Darcy Boyce announced that the grid will see a US$25 million upgrade under the Deployment of Cleaner Fuels and Renewable Energies Programme, which the Minister said is part of the island’s thrust towards becoming “one of the greenest economies” in the Western Hemisphere.
The Programme, which is being funded through a US$34 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), is intended to enhance the country’s energy security and sustainability by diversifying the energy mix through the promotion of renewable energy sources, as well as the modernization and expansion of the natural gas infrastructure.
Biogen Biotechnologies already processes waste from the food industry and uses it as feedstock for its biogas plants. With the agreement, HoSt and Biogen Biotechnologies will work in close cooperation to actively promote biogas to biomethane upgrading systems. Although natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) make up only 4 percent of the energy mix, as a whole, Barbados is heavily reliant on fossil fuel imports, in particular, heavy fuel oil (HFO).
According to Barbados National Energy Policy 2017 – 2037, over 90 percent of the energy used for electricity production is derived from the use of imported fossil fuels and so “constitutes a drain” on the foreign exchange resources.
