First biogas from Nature Energy Kværs

The first Danish-produced green biogas from the Kværs plant has just been sent to the gas grid. The plant can produce over 20 million cubic metres biogas annually, displacing the corresponding amount of natural gas from the Danish energy system.

Nature Energy has therefore commissioned its 13th plant in Denmark.

- This is a milestone for us. But being able to displace the fossil fuel energy sources and replace them with green, Danish-produced biogas is also primarily a major advance for the green transition, states Plant Manager, Gudmund Vejbæk Jepsen.

Over the next few months, all the tanks at the plant will be filled with organic waste, and full production is expected to be reached by late January.

The green gas grid

Biogas is expected to account for 40% of gas flowing through the gas grid in Denmark this year and the political ambition is to reach 100% by 2030.

Biogas is produced from substances such as slurry, deep litter, food waste from domestic kitchens and other organic waste products.

- In simple terms, a biogas plant is a gigantic hermetically-sealed compost tank, creating a sump, with an extractor at the top to suck out methane and other gases naturally produced when waste decomposes. It’s exactly the same process that occurs over millions of years to produce the natural gas we find underground, except that we are able to produce biogas here and now on the surface, using waste products to hand, explains Gudmund Jepsen Vejbæk.

When methane has been extracted from the waste, the by-product is returned to farmers where it's used as fertiliser.

- That makes biogas a sustainable resource as natural and sustainable as sun and wind, says Gudmund Vejbæk Jepsen.

Nature Energy is the world’s leading producer of biogas and biogas plants, and is currently building new plants in the USA, Canada and at several locations in Europe in addition to its 13 sites in Denmark.