CEDIGAZ has just published its 2024 annual report on the global biomethane market which focuses on recent trends in global and regional biomethane markets in 2023. According to CEDIGAZ, global biomethane production expanded to 7.7 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2022, a growth of 20% compared to 2021, driven by Europe and North America. It is estimated at 9.5 bcm in 2023, an increase of 23%. Driven by strong structural policy and market drivers, the biomethane market is poised for a huge expansion over this decade and beyond. The targets announced by regional and national governments around the world exceed 100 bcm/y by 2030. Reaching this ambitious level requires the adoption of the right policy and regulatory framework, an acceleration of support, and faster permitting, which many governments have put in place in 2023.
Zero Carbon Gas
CLEAN HYDROGEN: BUILDING LARGE-SCALE SUPPLY CHAINS
Cedigaz has just released its thematic report “CLEAN HYDROGEN: Building Large-scale Supply Chains”, which assesses progress in the development of large-scale clean hydrogen supply chains worldwide and looks at industry efforts to produce clean hydrogen.
THE NEW WORLD HYDROGEN ECONOMY
Since 2017, governments from 18 countries have adopted national hydrogen strategies for deploying clean (low and zero carbon) hydrogen energy solutions. Leading companies around the world are proactively investing in clean hydrogen and related technologies. The transition to clean hydrogen would create a significant step-change in hydrogen production technology in terms of scale and costs, making clean hydrogen solutions more attractive not only for industry, but also in all other sectors. Clean hydrogen is an emerging market. It is a key lever for achieving deep decarbonisation, specifically in hard-to-abate sectors like transport. It can tackle various critical energy challenges, including facilitating the large-scale integration of intermittent renewables, enabling grid balancing and seasonal storage. It can also help to improve air quality and strengthen energy security. Its potential is immense and future developments depend on energy and environmental policies, cost reductions and competition with other low-carbon options.
A new era for CCUS driven by contrasted policies and business models: US and European approaches
According to a new report by CEDIGAZ, CCUS is coming back into the limelight, especially in the US and in Europe, in the wake of the Paris agreement, boosted by a growing interest in hydrogen, rising carbon prices, new supporting policies and new business models.
There are currently 20 new, large-scale, CCUS projects planned around the world, nine of them in Europe. While projects developed in the middle of the 2000s mainly targeted coal-fired power plants and stored the captured carbon, the focus of the new projects is different as they tend to concentrate on industrial and manufacturing processes and on carbon utilization rather than just storage. Several projects involve production of clean hydrogen from natural gas, a cheaper option than hydrolysis using renewable power. New business models aim at reducing costs by dis-integrating the CCUS value chain into its three components of capture, transport and storage, and by addressing clusters of industrial facilities to achieve economies of scale.