Waga Energy and Prezero have opened their biomethane factory in Els Hostalets de Pierola (Barcelona). This is the largest project built in Spain to date that introduces biomethane made from waste-generated biogas into the grid from a controlled unit. It is also the first project in its segment to be financed through a long-term private power purchase agreement.

The new plant is located at the Can Mata controlled landfill, owned by PreZero Spain. It is designed to convert biogas from decomposed waste  into biomethane, a renewable energy that helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Sustainability criteria
The initiative for this project came from PreZero España, part of the German group Schwarz, which specialises in urban services and circular economy solutions; the French company Waga Energy, which specialises in the production of biomethane from a controlled  biogas unit; and Nedgia, part of the Naturgy group, which will distribute the gas through its network thanks to the six-kilometre connection built from the plant.

The new plant can produce up to 70 gigawatt hours of biomethane per year. The product has received ISCC EU certification, which means it meets the sustainability and greenhouse gas reduction criteria set out in the European Renewable Energy Directive.

Innovative technologies
Waga Energy has financed the project with a 6.6-million euro bank loan. The project has also received a 2.4-million euro grant from the EU’s Innovation Fund Small Scale programme, which supports the development of innovative technologies to reduce carbon emissions. Its production capacity is made possible by the size of the controlled landfill, which covers 78 hectares and is one of the largest in Spain.

The urban and industrial waste from Barcelona and the surrounding area stored in this landfill produces around 40 million cubic metres of biogas per year. Until now, only half of this had been used to produce thermal energy for the plant itself and electrical and thermal energy for the production of building materials.

International benchmark
Waga Energy has contributed a technology to the project that it has been researching for fifteen years and which it claims is “the most efficient and the only one dedicated to the production of biomethane from a controlled  biogas unit”. Over the last six years, it has put 18 plants into operation in France, Canada and Spain, and has another sixteen under construction in France, Canada and the United States.

For Gonzalo Cañete, CEO of PreZero in Spain and Portugal, “this is an international benchmark in the production of biomethane from waste”. This, he explains, is due to “the management of the controlled unit itself over decades, which is an example of the degasification of this type of plant in Europe, and something which has allowed us to produce renewable energy on a large scale”.

^{Photo: Waga Energy}