The Netherlands has set itself the goal of producing 2 bcm of green gas annually by 2030. This is currently 0.2 bcm. A tenfold increase in just eight years is a very ambitious target. To achieve this ambition, in April 2022 five green gas sector associations united under Platform Groen Gas. Gasunie plays an important role in the platform. This platform, in close consultation with the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, has started implementing a multi-year plan.

Gasunie sees many opportunities for market parties to scale up green gas production. In the REPowerEU plan, the European Commission has set a European green gas target of 35 bcm by 2030. The Dutch coalition agreement includes the ambition of introducing a blend with green gas. The government would then require suppliers to supply green gas to be used in the natural gas grid. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy aims for a blending obligation of 1.6 bcm by 2030.

The Dutch government has announced that, under the new Dutch Energy Act, Gasunie will be given the scope to bring new green gas technologies such as SCW and Eemsgas to the market. The SCW and Eemsgas plants have been set up to demonstrate that it is possible to produce green gas on a large scale using gasification. In terms of upscaling, we expect that, on successful demonstration of the technologies, several plants will be constructed to produce large volumes of green gas.

At the Demonstratiefaciliteit SKW Alkmaar demo gasification plant, syngas has been produced using SCW Systems’ supercritical water gasification technology from the end of 2021. In 2022, the plant ran without problem for many hundreds of hours. In 2022, work was carried out on the installations that enable the conversion of syngas to green gas. The first green gas was fed into the GTS network early in 2023.

Gasunie is a 35% shareholder in Demonstratiefaciliteit SKW Alkmaar. By taking this stake, Gasunie aims to facilitate the further development of the technology so that large-scale production of renewable gas becomes feasible in the Netherlands and beyond. In 2022, SCW and Gasunie developed an acceleration plan for this. This plan also pays attention to SCW Systems’ other promising technology, CO₂CLEANUP. With this technology, CO₂ is extracted from the atmosphere or processes and is permanently captured in usable powders. Gasunie does not, however, participate in or invest in CO₂CLEANUP.

At the beginning of 2022, Gasunie and torrefaction specialist Perpetual Next set up a 50/50 joint venture to complete the Torrgas Delfzijl project. The plan is to build a new plant that will eventually be able to sustainably produce green gas from syngas.

In June, the partners decided to continue the project under the new name EemsGas, a name chosen in recognition of the plant’s location in the municipality of Eemsdelta. Moreover, this name change avoids confusion concerning the nature of Torrgas’ involvement: after Perpetual Next and Gasunie took over the project at the beginning of 2022, Torrgas ceased being a shareholder, but the company is still involved as a supplier of the technology.

With the EemsGas project, the two partners are investigating the possibilities of building a commercial gasification plant in Delfzijl that would use woody biomass originating from recycled wood waste. This plant would use the technology developed by Torrgas, with which green gas can be produced from syngas. The emphasis is now on finalising the technical design of the plant and updating the business case based on the latest market information, after which a decision on the next step will be taken in 2023.