Responding to the European Commission's Clean Industrial Deal that was presented on February 26, 2025, the European Biogas Association (EBA) says it welcomes the launch of the Clean Industrial Deal strategy, outlining the Commission's plan to address industry competitiveness concerns and economic resilience, while still aspiring to reach EU decarbonisation targets. However, the strategy proposed by the EU Executive sets no clear pathway for the role of biomethane made in Europe and seems to concentrate on electrification and favor less competitive low-carbon gases.
EBA welcomes the accent on CleanTech manufacturing as key enabler of industrial transformation, as well as on the affordable deployment of renewable energy from homegrown resources to deliver a cost-efficient and resilient transition to net zero.
Numerous relevant representatives of Europe’s industry have already made it clear that biogases are a key pillar in their defossilization pathways by supporting the Biomethane Offtakers Declaration released earlier this month.
According to EBA, biogases are currently providing 22 bcm of renewable gas. With a minimum potential to supply 101 bcm by 2040, the sector can cover over 80 percent of the EU’s forecasted gas consumption in 2040.
Investments are ready to be made into Europe’s biogas and biomethane technologies, which are sustainable, competitive, and leaders in the global market.
EBA also shares the Commission’s vision to strengthen the sustainability and competitiveness of energy-intensive industries, as well as the need for more demand-side measures to realise that goal.
The implementation of an Industrial Decarbonisation Accelerator Act to increase demand for EU-made clean products, a voluntary carbon intensity label for industrial products and concrete measures to address permitting bottlenecks are relevant steps in that direction.
Electrification is a difficult path for many energy-intensive industries today and renewable gas alternatives, such as biomethane aka renewable natural gas (RNG), will be needed to ensure their cost-competitive transition.
Biogases are also circularity frontrunners, a key priority of the new Commission’s strategy, which is to adopt a Circular Economy Act in 2026 enabling free movement of circular products, waste or high quality recyclates, as well as stimulating demand for circular products.
This sets high expectations towards the full valorisation of biogases, produced in Europe from multiple waste streams, and their co-products, resulting from the optimisation of the production process: digestate, an organic fertiliser, and biogenic carbon dioxide (bioCO2), a substitute of its fossil counterpart for all those industrial processes depending on CO2.
Circularity is key to maximising the EU’s limited resources, reducing dependencies, enhancing resilience and sustainability.
The EU should invest in reducing gas dependence much faster. Biogases will play a decisive role as the most scalable and cost-effective renewable gas, enabler of much needed grid flexibility. To help EU industries become more clean and competitive, we urge EU legislators to be more bold on their support for those green gases made in Europe that are championing renewable gas deployment today, by ramping up the production of biogases and fostering their industrial use, said Harmen Dekker, CEO of EBA.
As recently explained in EBA’s position paper on the Clean Industrial Deal, EBA asks EU legislators to further leverage the strengths of the biogases value chain by:
- Speeding-up the growth of European biomethane, accelerating the deployment of new biomethane production capacities, simplifying procedures and protecting the biogas value chain as a leading clean technology sector;
- Channelling part of the investment mechanisms set up by the Clean Industrial Deal, as well as the efforts to reinforce sectoral skills, into biogas and biomethane;
- Relying on biogases as vectors for the cost-competitive defossilisation of all EU industries; and
- Creating a market to valorise sustainable products, including bioCO2 and bio-based fertilisers.
