New agreement: Audi chooses biogas from Denmark

The Nature Energy group, which has its headquarters in Odense, Denmark, has signed an agreement with the German car giant to provide eco-friendly biogas certificates for approximately 10,000 Audis throughout Europe.

“We’re extremely proud to have entered into an agreement with one of the world’s largest car manufacturers. This serves to confirm the shift in strategy that we set in motion in 2012 when we started an extensive biogas-plant building programme. Today, we operate four large plants, and we’re building three new ones, and we are planning ten more plants in the future,” according to Ole Hvelplund, CEO of Nature Energy.

Nature Energy produces biogas based on waste and slurry. This makes the biogas is a second-generation biofuel, which does not use food as a raw material. Accordingly, the reduction in carbon emissions is huge – in fact, more than 100%, because biogas prevents methane emissions in agriculture and at the same time it displaces fossil fuels such as diesel oil and petrol, when used in cars. This is one of the reasons why Audi has decided to buy its biogas from Nature Energy.

More natural gas-powered vehicles on European roads

In Denmark, a number of municipalities use biogas for their buses, refuse collection lorries and the cars used by the home nursing service. In recent years, municipalities such as Fredericia, Skive and the City of Copenhagen have made the decision to replace diesel and petrol fuelled vehicles with biogas-fuelled vehicles. The same trend is evident elsewhere in Europe, where there are more than 2 million natural gas-powered vehicles on the roads today.

“More and more people are waking up to the advantages of using biogas for transport, and Denmark has a unique opportunity to become one of Europe’s leading biogas producers. There are currently more than 2 million natural gas-powered vehicles in Europe, and replacing petrol and diesel with biogas can really start to reduce our carbon emissions in the transport sector,” says Ole Hvelplund, CEO of Nature Energy. Audi has observed the same trend: “Audi AG in Germany is keenly focused on natural gas-powered vehicles and has just introduced a natural gas-powered version of the new Audi A5: the A5 g-tron. In Denmark, we are monitoring developments closely, but whether natural gas-powered vehicles will also succeed in Denmark depends to a large extent on the political context and further expansion of the distribution network,” according to Morten Troest, Sales Manager at Audi Danmark.

The advantage of gas-powered vehicles is their long range, which remains an issue for most electric cars, and with that in mind, Audi will not be launching an electric car with a long range until next year.

Between 2020 and 2030, under EU requirements, Denmark must reduce its carbon emissions in the transport sector by 39% compared to the 2005 level.

Facts

• Nature Energy converts 140,000 tonnes of food waste and 1 million tonnes of slurry into carbon-neutral biogas each year. Overall, Nature Energy produces 45 million cubic metres of biogas, making it the largest producer in Denmark.
   
• Total production of biogas in Denmark in 2016 was 191 million cubic metres.
   
• The agreement with Audi runs from 2017 to 2019.