Finland-headed energy company St1 Nordic Oy (St1) has announced that it has made an investment decision to construct a biogas upgrading and liquefaction plant in Sweden. A prerequisite for the investment decision is a long-term off-take contract to buy raw biogas, which St1 has signed with municipal energy utility Borås Energi och Miljö AB.
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The biogas upgrading and liquefaction plant will be built at Borås Energi och Miljö’s Sobacken Energy and Environment Centre in Borås – an integrated wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) and a biomass-fired combined heat and power (CHP) plant that was officially opened in September 2019.
As part of the agreement, the two public gas filling stations of Borås Energi and Miljö – Åhaga and Hulta – will be transferred to St1 Biogas.
St1 will continue expanding its biogas filling station network in the Nordics to distribute this new bioLNG production.
Operational end of 2023
St1 will start the construction work in the autumn and the facility is expected to commence its operations at the end of 2023.
St1 has signed an agreement with Wärtsilä Gas Solutions that will supply the biogas upgrading and liquefaction facilities.
The project has also been granted investment support from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Step (Klimatklivet) program.
Ideal partnership
St1 and Borås Energi och Miljö together create a strong value chain in renewable biofuels, both focusing on their own areas of expertise with the cooperation agreement defining a clear business interface between the parties.
Borås Energi och Miljö will continue to digest food waste and sewage sludge from Borås to produce around 40 GWh per annum of biogas while St1 will upgrade the biogas to renewable natural gas (RNG) and bioLNG, distribute and sell it on the energy and transportation markets.
Our modern facilities, in combination with the more than 30 years of experience and competence we have within the company, will enable us to produce large quantities of biogas in the future. This collaboration with St1 allows our biogas to reach a large market, said Magnus Kårestedt, CEO of Borås Energi och Miljö.
Nordic expansion
St1 is already a leading biogas player in Sweden, with about 30 percent market share in the road transport segment. Its biogas operations are located in the urban areas of Southern Sweden as well as in Stockholm.
The company produces, imports, and exports biogas, and delivers it to customers through several sales channels. St1 has six biogas production and upgrading plants in Sweden.
Two of them, namely, Söderåsen Bioenergi AB and Falkenbergs Biogas AB, are majority-owned subsidiaries.
We have carefully chosen to start a collaboration with St1 because the company has a solid and versatile track record in the energy sector, as well as a strong growth strategy in the Nordic biogas market, Magnus Kårestedt added.
St1 started off its biogas business in Finland and Norway last year. The company is cooperating with Knapphus Energi and Nor-log in building infrastructure for biogas in Norway.
In Finland, St1 and dairy major Valio Oy have established a joint venture to produce renewable biogas from dairy farm manure and other agricultural by-products, mainly as fuel for heavy-duty transport.
The joint venture aims to achieve a production capacity of up to one terawatt-hour (TWh) by 2030.
At St1, we reinforce our operations through strategic long-term partnerships. Strengthening our biogas business in the countries where we operate is a concrete step in the consistent and long-term implementation of our growth strategy. We are delighted that our plans with a solid partner, Borås Energi och Miljö, are now materializing, and we can start to decarbonize transport and accelerate the energy transition together, said Matti Oksanen, Director of St1’s Gas Business.
