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The week in brief · Week 43 · 19–25 October
The week of 19–25 October was about who pays for renewable gas and who buys it. In Britain, the government approved a new North Sea gas field while the biomethane industry pointed out that the main support scheme has run out of money. Further afield, Singapore named the companies that will import biomethane, and ferry and inland shipping operators emerged as new buyers. In Europe, the Commission set out the timetable for its first biomethane matching round, and Poland gave biogas plants a new route onto congested grids.
The European Commission has published the timetable for the first round of its Biomethane Mechanism, the voluntary platform that pairs buyers with suppliers. Buyers can submit demand requests from 4 November to 23 December. On 21 January 2027 the requests go to registered suppliers as anonymised information sheets, suppliers have until 4 March to respond, and matched results are due on 18 March. A regulatory dashboard on the conditions for cross-border trade within the EU also goes live on 4 November, while information on regional investment conditions and on access to finance will follow in 2027 (European Commission, n.d.-a).
The Commission runs the rounds but stays out of commercial negotiations. Smaller producers can be aggregated with others to meet the demand of larger buyers, which matters in a market built from thousands of farm-scale plants. The mechanism rests on Regulation (EU) 2024/1789 and Directive (EU) 2024/1788, which require the Commission to set it up (European Commission, n.d.-b). It offers no subsidy or price guarantee. What it should give the industry is the first Europe-wide view of who wants biomethane, how much and where.
