“Tie biogas projects together”

Biogas West began life as a partnership between the Swedish city of Gothenburg, motor manufacturing company Volvo, and eleven other public partners. It aims to stimulate market development within biogas production, distribution and the development of the gas-powered vehicle market.

The project has three key activities:

• It offers guidance and support to its members on funding and business development.
• It funds technology development projects.
• It aims to influence public opinion through advertisements, brochures, and participation in trade fairs and seminars.

From the beginning
Project manager Mr Svensen has worked for the project since it began in 2001, having worked in the field of renewable fuels as a consultant since the mid 1990s. When Biogas West started, there were nine gas fuelling stations and approximately 800 vehicles in western Sweden. By 2008, the region had the best infrastructure in the country with 36 gas fuelling stations, approximately 7,000 vehicles and eight facilities producing biogas for automotive purposes.

On course
“We work to a long term plan, which is to reduce fossil fuel use in the transport sector by twenty per cent by 2020,” says Bernt. “We also have a shorter term target of 45 biogas fuelling stations in the region, and 10,000 biogas-fuelled vehicles, by the end of 2009. We’re on course to achieve this, and the biogas we use has already been ‘eco labeled’ at the pumps, displaying a certificate to inform customers of exactly what they’re buying. This is the first sustainable fuel to be labeled in Sweden.”

Who's in
The Biogas West project links car manufacturers, biogas producers, waste companies and municipalities. In fact, as Bernt explains, anyone involved in the biogas supply chain: from raw material and waste, to production, distribution and the market.

In the seven years since its inception, the project has gone from strength to strength and now has around thirty members.

“We’re working with biogas in cars and trucks, biogas supply infrastructure, multi-fuel filling stations where you can test different fuels, and we’re planning a big gasification plant for producing biomethane,” explains Bernt.

Copying
Now other regions in Sweden are copying the concept: Biogas South began two years ago, and Stockholm recently started Biogas East. Over recent years, Bernt has seen an increasing number of areas coming together to convene on the subject of biogas, from the energy sector to waste treatment, to manufacturing. It is, he says, vital that this happens if Biogas West is to achieve its ultimate aim of creating, and sustaining, a biogas industry.

Carry the industry forward
“Moving forward, biogas will play an increasing role,” he explains. “We’ve seen a lot of new companies coming into the area and working together, and now we’re looking at what they can do to increase growth and create jobs in the region.”

Indeed, ask Bernt about his ambitions for the project, and it soon becomes clear that one of his greatest motivators is creating jobs in the renewable fuels sector; to create a thriving industry that will service the pressing need to make the switch from fossil fuels.

“It is our goal to start a new industry, tying all the projects we have been involved with together,” he explains. “There is so much activity, not just in Sweden or Europe but all over the world; everyone has the capability to produce and use biogas. What we’re keen to see is the creation of new jobs to support the industry and carry it forward.”