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Today, for the very first time, green gas can flow in Gasunie’s national gas transmission network. Green gas is biogas, which is produced from organic waste and then improved to the quality of natural gas. Today Gasunie has opened the supply valve at the Rova/HVC biogas installation in Zwolle to allow green gas to flow into the national natural gas transmission network. This marked a new chapter for natural gas, which is at the heart of a sustainable energy supply in the Netherlands and which can now itself become greener.

This is the first time that gas originating from biological, non-fossil origin has been introduced into the gas supply on a national scale. This also means that it is the first time that locally-produced green gas has been made nationally available to gas users and to gas traders. This represents a major incentive for the development of a national green gas market and for the sustainability of the energy supply in the Netherlands. The green gas certificates from the Gasunie subsidiary Vertogas ensure that producers can sell their gas to traders and users as certified green gas. In this way, the locally-produced biogas is transformed into a sustainable product that can be traded (inter)nationally.

According to the experts of the New Gas Energy Transition Platform, the production of green gas in the next five to ten years can amount to 10 percent of the total natural gas production. That brings the government’s sustainability targets significantly closer. In the long term, green gas can play an even greater role via gasification technology which allows biomass to be converted into gas efficiently and on a large scale.

Sustainable energy supply

To be able to feed this green gas safely into its network, during the last year Gasunie, with the assistance of the energy testing and certification body KEMA, has undertaken extensive research into the relevant measures required. This was undertaken within the framework of a pilot project with waste processing firms Rova, HVC and regional network operator Enexis. The origin of the green gas that Gasunie feeds into its network differs from that of natural gas: it is produced from organic waste, which means that it can contain micro-organisms and trace elements. Amongst other things, KEMA has developed a set of filters to be able to guarantee that the green gas can be fed into the gas network without any biological contaminants and at the correct quality. This guarantees that, under all conditions, the gas transmission network in the Netherlands remains safe and reliable. Practical experience can now be gained, which means that in addition to the safety aspects it is also possible to study how to achieve the most efficient way of feeding green gas into the network so that the costs for producers can be kept as low as possible.

‘We have developed a set of requirements that green gas must meet so that it can be fed into our network safely. We only accept it after our requirements have been met. This means that the end user is guaranteed that the gas supplied to his or her house has the same properties as natural gas. Consequently, there is no change for the end user except that, from now, he or she can use green gas and thus attribute to a sustainable energy supply´ says Geert Graaf, Director of Gas Transport Services, the subsidiary of Gasunie that manages the national natural gas transmission network.

Source: Gasunie - August 5th, 2010