Discover TotalEnergies' objectives and ambitions in biogas production
[Question asked by the interviewer]: So, is biogas on the move?
[Answer Olivier Guerrini, Vice President Biogas BU]: We are moving very fast. We have made major achievements in 2022. We are now one of the major players in France in biogas. We’ve signed a very important partnership with the agriculture sector, with the FNSEA, the main agricultural union in France.
We’re also now active in the US, with some first projects with our JV with the Clean Energy Group that aims to produce biomethane for the transportation sector. We are also active in India with our partnership with Adani Group. And we also signed, at the beginning of this year,a very important partnership with the Veolia Group in order to develop some biogas projects in Europe, but also in the US and in Brazil.
We have increased our target from 6 to 20 TWh by 2030. It’s a very important increase. It represents roughly 40 times what we’re producing now, so it’s very ambitious.
[Question asked by the interviewer]: Do you have any good news for us?
[Answer Olivier Guerrini, Vice President Biogas BU]: We are now close to starting up our new plant, BioBéarn, that is located in the southwest of France, near Pau. The plant is a very important project for us. It will become our new flagship.
It’s the eighth plant we have in our portfolio in France. The plant will start with a production capacity of 70 GWh and will ramp up to 160 GWh. We are very happy to see that plant producing.It will help us to avoid 30,000 tons per year of CO₂. It’s an amazing achievement of the team. I just would like to congratulate them for the incredible work they have carried out in the last months to complete that project.
[Question asked by the interviewer]: Why are you pursuing this ambition?
[Answer Olivier Guerrini, Vice President Biogas BU]: First of all, because we believe in it. We think that biogas is a very important energy for the coming years. It really helps to decarbonize industry and transportation so we can avoid a lot of CO₂ emissions in the coming years.
It’s very simple. It’s a low-tech technology. So we can deploy it massively in the next years. We see also that there are a lot of environmental benefits for the customers using that energy. It also helps to share value with local counterparts, the farmers, for example.
And last but not least, it helps secure the supply for gas, mainly in Europe, for the next years. So biogas fits perfectly with the multi-energy strategy of the Company and, more generally, with the sustainable energy transition.