Biomethane via Woodroll® - Investigation of Revenues & Profitability Analysis

Sammanfattning: Woodroll® is a gasification technology developed by Cortus that produces synthetic gas (syngas) from biomass. Syngas can be used in several different applications. One interesting option is to convert it further into biomethane, which can be used as automotive fuel or replace natural gas in gas grids. The revenues and profitability of biomethane production is heavily dependent on policy instruments and support schemes. These subsidies can be either direct, where the producer receives a feed-in tariff for biomethane production, or indirect, where consumption rather than production is stimulated. This work has investigated which revenues that can be expected from biomethane production via Woodrooll® in Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, France and Italy, both in terms of amounts and risks. A profitability analysis have also been carried out to preliminary compare the returns in the different countries, where two different scenarios for different revenues have been analyzed for two different feedstock prices. The results showed that the Netherlands and Italy provides the potentially highest revenues. However, there are uncertainty factors associated with all cases. Sweden and Germany offers indirect support and negative market trends. The Netherlands and the UK are the only options that provide a feed-in tariff for biomethane production via gasification. In the Netherlands the tariff can be secured before making investment decision but is only disbursed for 12 years. The UK offers a fixed feed-in tariff for 20 years but the tariff is secured first after plant start-up and the tariff may be reduced on a quarterly basis. In fact, the tariff has been reduced with 40 % over the last 24 months, but there are discussions on introducing a separate tariff for gasification. Italy has the support schemes that potentially offer the highest revenues, but gasification is currently not eligible for support. The latter also holds for France, which may be an interesting case in the future. If risk is to be minimized, Cortus may either focus on the Netherlands or await the discussions in the UK and France on introducing a gasification tariff. The work on standardization of biomethane use should also be followed since Italy offers the potentially highest return of the investigated countries. It is also recommended to look further for other cases. The best-case scenario for the risk averse is the one that provides a fixed tariff for 20 years and in which the tariff can be secured before an investment decision is taken.