With German help, Spain wakes up to biogas – By Reiner Wandler
Enormous quantities of biological waste are produced by the food processing industry and livestock breeding in Spain. Thanks to a 2007 law, the waste is being converted into electricity.
Spain is discovering what central and northern Europe has known for a long time. Garbage is worth its weight in gold. The government in Madrid wants to install the infrastructure to allow 250 megawatts of electricity to be generated using biogas by 2010.
Similar to Germany, Spain pays fixed prices for electricity generated from renewable sources. Depending on plant capacity, between eight and 13.80 cents per kilowatt hour are on offer. Slurry, manure and waste from foodstuffs are all to be converted into raw material for fuel.
Some 166 megawatts of capacity have already been installed, 75 percent of which originates from Spanish landfill sites. Most of the remainder is generated using waste from livestock breeding. To meet the requirements of the legislation, Spain needs another 84 megawatts by 2010.
“We could produce at least double the electricity from biogas that the law foresees,” said Josep Turmo, spokesperson for the Spanish Renewable Energy Association (APPA). An amended law will soon be introduced, he says.
These are lucrative prospects that are attracting many companies from central and northern Europe with years of experience with biogas in their own regions. The bulk of them are German enterprises (alongside companies from the Netherlands and Denmark), especially the industry’s two biggest players, Biogas Nord and EnviTec Biogas.
Bielefeld-based Biogas Nord, a biogas pioneer, has established a subsidiary in Valencia. The Spanish division is mainly concentrating on waste from the food processing industry and treated sewage.
“The processing of fruit and vegetables produces waste from fruit and plants as well as oil. This waste can be used to good effect to produce biogas,” said Luis Puchades, head of Biogas Nord España.
His project is well underway. Construction of three production plants, two in the Extremadura region and one in Andalusia, at a cost of €6 million, is about to begin. Seventeen other plants across Spain, each with a capacity of 500 kilowatts, are in the planning stage. Puchades is also certain that “the 250 megawatt forecast by the government does not come close to saturating the market.”
That’s also what competitors think. Lohne-based EnviTec is convinced of the industry’s future in Spain. Its Spanish division is planning at full speed. “We want to install 30 megawatts in Spain over the next two to three years,” explained Xabier Garatea, EnviTec’s managing director in Spain.
The German engineers are concentrating in Spain on what they learned at home: processing waste from livestock breeding. Spain has large-scale pork, dairy and poultry farms. They produce waste, both liquid and solid, in abundance.
EnviTec, which set up its Spanish division in the Basque region, is setting its sights on the Mediterranean coast, the north and the south of the country. “We provide a one-stop package that includes planning and construction through to financing and maintenance,” Garatea said.
Several contract negotiations are nearing completion. The construction of the first plants should be getting underway in early 2009. They will each also have a capacity of 500 kilowatts. “Our customers are individual companies or several livestock breeders combined. It depends on the respective capacity,” said Garatea, whose plans extend substantially farther.
He regards Spain as the ideal springboard to Portugal and Latin America. In Spain, the economic and political environments are propitious, he says. And science is also helping to promote the sector’s success, according to satisfied investors.
Aside from small projects supported by regional governments, the research institute of the Spanish food processing industry AINIA is involved in biogas issues and has founded a consortium, ProBiogás, for that purpose. Besides AINIA, 27 further companies, public research institutes and universities are involved.
The Spanish ministry of science is represented in ProBiogás by the Institute for Diversification and Saving of Energy. It has contributed over €5 million to support research until 2010.
ProBiogás’ work is paying off for investors. Researchers are drawing up a map that shows where refuse has accumulated and in what quantities. After that, sustainable and environmentally friendly processing guidelines for individual residues of waste are to be drawn up.
“Here in Spain we have waste in dimensions unknown to the market leaders in northern Europe,” said Andrés Pascual, head of AINIA’s environment section, referring to the waste generated by the processing of six million tons of citrus fruit annually. ProBiogás wants to optimize the tricky fermentation process of this material, a piece of know-how that investors could make good use of.
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