Biomethane producers in Ukraine call on the Verkhovna Rada to finally adopt law No. 9456 on customs control and customs clearance of biomethane, which regulates its export, as soon as possible.

“A second reading is needed in March. Two ready-made biomethane plants are standing idle, three more have actually been built and will stand together with these. All other investors are looking at the pioneers. If they don’t succeed, then who will build next?” said chairman of the board of the Bioenergy Association of Ukraine (BAU) Heorhiy Heletukha at a thematic press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Thursday.

He is convinced that if biomethane exports are finally unblocked by the end of this year, at least five plants will supply biomethane to the network, and next year “we can talk about a dozen additional plants.”

Heletukha clarified that the capacity of plants ready to export biomethane is already about 80 million cubic meters.

According to him, two projects with a capacity of approximately 3 million cubic meters of biomethane in Kyiv and Chernihiv regions are owned by Gals Agro, one plant with the same capacity is owned by VITAGRO.

There is also a large project of Teofipol Energy Company (Khmelnytsky region) for 56 million cubic meters. Now this company produces electricity from biogas, but has already purchased the necessary equipment to produce biomethane from it, laid a pipe to the main gas pipeline, and this will be the first project that will connect not to distribution networks, but to the main network.

In addition, according to him, the Yuzefo-Mykolayivska Biogas Company (Vinnytsia region) is ready to export biomethane, which plans to liquefy it and sell it as bioLNG. The project capacity is about 12 million cubic meters.

The head of the board of Global 100 RE Ukraine, the president of PrJSC MHP Eco Energy, Oleksandr Dombrovsky, for his part, said that, according to experts, the rapid potential for biomethane production in Ukraine could be within 1 billion cubic meters, "if you create minimal conditions for its development."

“We expect the adoption of this bill in March. We really hope that it will be adopted, because we need to move towards the most efficient system of energy security and independence, then we will have a very cool export-oriented economy,” Dombrovsky said, noting that “raising the barrier to banning exports is the mission of the state,” because now there is a war for the export positions of European countries and Ukraine on the border.

He also added that the renewable gas market is growing very quickly, especially in the EU.

“Today we have nine biogas projects in operation, some within Myronivsky Hliboproduct, some with other customers, three of which are in the EU,” Dombrovsky described the situation.

Serhiy Savchuk, Director of Investments and Business Development of VITAGRO Group, emphasized that Europeans are very interested in biomethane.

“There is not a single country in Europe where we do not have a potential buyer and with whom we have not signed a preliminary agreement. In addition, agreements have been signed with the largest name companies who wanted to enter similar projects with us, co-finance, use us as an anchor company, but given that exports are blocked, they are not taking part in this yet,” he said.

“I urge you to look at this sector as the future of Ukraine. We can become the main supplier of renewable gases to Europe, everything is there for this. In business there is the concept of a “blue ocean” - these are sectors where there is no competition. Biomethane is exactly that case. The government needs to give priority to the development of this sector,” Heletukha is convinced.

According to the head of the board of BAU, Ukraine’s potential for biomethane production is more than 20 billion cubic meters per year, and this is a resource in demand in Europe, since it is a scarce market, and Europe already lacks about 15 billion cubic meters of biomethane to achieve their goal of producing 35 billion cubic meters by 2030.