Task Force 1
The goal of Task Force 1 is to provide EU Member States with useful insights and guidelines to develop national biomethane targets, strategies and policies. Currently, 22 Member States have appointed one or more representatives to the Task Force 1. The profile of the representatives is a good combination of policy officers from one or more ministries (mostly energy and agriculture and climate policy domains), energy market operators and technical experts from energy agencies.
The main emphasis of Task Force 1 currently lies in communicating biomethane related actions and national targets by 2030 in the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) for 2023-2030. This has been facilitated by sharing the best practice of Member States with more advanced biomethane market, capturing different approaches to phase out natural gas imports across the end-use sectors. The aim is to create a network of biomethane related civil servants that would benefit from collective capacity, leverage, and insight to propose a comprehensive set of measures to accelerate the national sustainable biomethane potential deployment.
One pivotal aspect that characterizes Task Force 1 is the significance of its workshops. These gatherings serve as occasions for Member States to convene physically and allow them to collectively acquire knowledge, which they can subsequently implement within their respective countries.
To date, the Member States of Task Force 1 have convened on three occasions. The first workshop took place in Madrid on the 27th and 28th of March, 2023, followed by a second workshop in Rome on the 31st of August and 1st of September, 2023, and a third workshop in Tallinn on February 28th-29th and March 1st, 2024. The significance of these workshops lies in their ability to provide policymakers with insightful perspectives on sustainable biomethane production through site visits to relevant facilities. Moreover, they enable Member States to draw inspiration from the experiences and policies of other Member States, fostering the exchange of best practices not only among Member States but also with the European Commission and other Task Forces representatives, including industry experts. This collaborative environment enhances the collective understanding of biomethane and fosters a stronger partnership to foster the biomethane sector forward.
In the framework of Task Force 1 of the Biomethane Industrial Partnership, the European Commission prepared biomethane country fiches for each Member State to assess the current level of biogas and biomethane production with sustainable biomethane potential compared to the share of their 2021 natural gas imports. The fiches also contain specific key messages for each Member State.
Countries that have a national biomethane production potential which is less than 0.05 bcm call for case-specific project design to produce economically viable quantities of biomethane in a sustainable way. For this reason, the Commission decided not to prepare a specific country fiche for Cyprus, Malta and Luxemburg.
The biomethane country fiches are published to encourage and support further cooperation between Member States and/or industry stakeholders, also in the light of the ongoing process to update the National Energy and Climate Plans.
The target of 35 bcm per year of biomethane production by 2030 can only be achieved if we act together.
Check out more information on the biomethane section of the European Commission’s website.
To support further promotion of biomethane, the European Commission has created a biomethane video to address wider public. Learn more about the benefits of biomethane, one of the main renewable gases of the future!
Task Force 1 prepared the first deliverable ‘Biomethane incentives and their effectiveness’, aimed to facilitate discussion among Member States on how to design and implement biomethane market incentives to maximise their impact. The report collects and describes incentives available for Member States to encourage investments in sustainable biomethane production. The portfolio of incentives is supported with trade-offs, reported by the Task Force 1’s members. This report also captures insights from the ‘GreenMeUP’ project, performed by a research consortium for the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme.