ORG Managing Director, Mike Davis was recently featured in an article published in the Australia Financial Review, where he had some great insights about the future of clean energy and the significant role that biomethane will play in decarbonisation. Here is an excerpt from the article, where he is featured:
Managing director for renewable gas for the Optimal Group Michael Davis says that given the right policy settings biomethane will play an essential role in helping to decarbonise hard-to-electrify sectors.
“This is because of its interchangeability with natural or fossil gas as well as providing reliable and responsive energy to support the variability of wind and solar,” says Davis.
“The value for the energy system is that biomethane is a renewable energy in the form of a molecule that can be used on demand by leveraging the inherent storage and capacity of gas infrastructure.”
Michael Davis says that given the right policy settings biomethane will play an essential role in helping to decarbonise hard-to-electrify sectors.
Davis says Australia is “at least 25 years behind Europe and 15 years behind the US” when it comes to renewable gas technology, such as biomethane.
“We have millions of tonnes of organic waste and residues in Australia, but we utilise less than 1 per cent of this available energy by sending organic waste and residues to landfill, composting (without energy recovery), burning it or leaving it in the field,” he says.
“Currently there is a small amount of biogas captured from sewage, animal slurries and landfill, however, due to a lack of incentives for beneficial use of this form of renewable gas – most of this gas is used to generate non-responsive electricity at relatively low efficiency.
“This means it is just generated as the gas is produced or in many cases the gas is simply flared, or in worst case vented to atmosphere.”
Read the full article here: https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/on-the-cusp-of-a-50b-renewable-gas-bonanza-20230620-p5di28