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The week in brief · Week 44 · 26 October – 1 November
The week of 26 October to 1 November was about the conditions biomethane producers work under rather than new capacity. In Britain, the Budget left the main support scheme for new plants frozen. Spain lowered the oxygen limit for biomethane injected into its gas grid, the European Commission's crop forecasters confirmed a poor maize silage harvest across much of the continent, and new outlets appeared at Polish sugar mills and in Singapore's aviation fuel market.
The UK Budget of 28 October did not lift the frozen budget cap on the Green Gas Support Scheme (GGSS), the tariff that pays new anaerobic digestion plants for injecting biomethane into the grid. According to the Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources Association (ADBA), the cap has been frozen for more than four months, more than a dozen shovel-ready plants are waiting for a go-ahead, and the freeze could last until the 2027 spending review. In the same Budget, the government allocated £27 million to the first Hydrogen Allocation Round (ADBA, 2026a).
The association's chair, Chris Huhne, put the request plainly: "Lift the cap now and they will be producing gas for British homes." ADBA suggests three ways to do it: the Budget's exemption for new policy costs essential to security of supply, Green Gas Levy money already collected but unspent, or direct Exchequer support of the kind hydrogen received. It did welcome two measures: moving gas standing charges onto the unit rate, which shifts more of the levy onto heavy fossil gas users, and scrapping the Gas Shipper Obligation, a proposed levy that would also have applied to biomethane.
