Biopact, Dec 7 - Biogas from wood chips, more efficient than cellulosic ethanol. Sweden, Europe's leader when it comes using renewables, the country generates 28% of all its energy from green sources, is now taking the development of biogas as a transport fuel a step further.
By gasification of low-grade biomass such as forestry residues, Göteborg Energi AB plans on producing biogas in large quantities. Their aim is to build a biomass gasification plant with a capacity to produce enough biogas for 75,000 cars. They will convert wood chips into methane with 70% efficiency.
According to an EU well-to-wheel study of more than 70 different (fossil and renewable) fuels and energy paths, including hydrogen from wind, solar or nuclear, biogas is the cleanest and most climate-neutral transport fuel of them all.
They plan to have the plant in operation by 2011 at a cost of roughly €150 million. Since the technology employed is untested on this scale, they are depending on government or EU funding.
The large-scale use of the green gas has one major disadvantage, in that one needs dedicated cars, similar to CNG-vehicles, to use the fuel.
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