Following the efforts to decarbonise the electricity with implementation of wind- and PV installations, it is also of imminent importance to decarbonise natural gas, which is the biggest energy import product into the EU today. Renewable methane, so-called e-methane is the direct renewable equivalent of natural gas. It can be stored and transported in the existing gas infrastructure and be utilized accross sectors, for transportation, power generation and industrial heating. The European energy transition relies on both: renewable electricity and renewable gas.
Electrochaea has developed a bio-methanation technology which allows the large scale production of e-methane from renewable power and waste CO2. Our highly productive microorganism and pressure bioreactor design carry the potential to solve the challenge of providing cost-effective large-scale energy storage and a multi-purpose e- fuel. Echaea are the only company worldwide to have validated a biological methanation technology in industrial prototypes that turn CO2 into e-methane, using curtailed renewable power, and storing it in existing gas grids. Our technology has shown to produce grid-quality emethane in a continuous process at a 1MW scale (Biofos, DK, Solothurn, CH) and now needs to be scaled up to commercial size. The EIC grant funded project will de-risk Electrochaea’s Power-to-Methane solution to market-readiness.
We have assessed a market potential today of around 500 biological methanation plants and of 5,000 in the EU, more around the world, by 2050.
By 2050, this technology could convert 0.8% of annual CO2 released in the EU.
