Polish natural gas industry poised for growth when relaxed regulatory hurdles

Poland's natural gas sector is in its infancy, but the industry is ready for explosive growth in the coming years. At least 300 agricultural plants are thought to an advanced stage of planning will be, and the Polish Government seeks an ambitious intake of 2500 projects by 2020. A huge resource potential and an attractive system for pipeline gas, electricity, heat, cogeneration biogas plants made the Polish way present alerted companies in more saturated European markets. I recently caught with three speakers on which the growth of the Polish industry serves upcoming bio-gas Poland Conference that timely meeting place for industry work towards parties on.

Grzegorz is the President of Poldanor, the first agricultural biogas plant built in Poland in 2005 and currently 8 plants of the capacity 7.4 MWe, about 40% of the total production capacity in agricultural biogas in Poland. Norbert Kurczyna is the waste management Department of the city. The city began landfill biogas plant in 1996. It what such Thirdly, companies in Poland and currently one of the largest in the country. Jagoda Sumicka is trade policy analyst in the trade and Agriculture Directorate of the OECD.

Regulatory obstacles

Poland's small level of development regulatory factors can be attributed to. "Biogas projects, such as other projects of RES by unclear rules and different interpretations of various authorities, be prevented," said Brodziak. "Problems with the connection to the network, long investment procedures and often protests of local communities arise from lack of knowledge about the industry face are the challenges that every investor in the industry has probably.""A well-prepared education initiative is the company which is dominant on the attitude of local and regional authorities in some circles required to change negative attitudes towards biogas."

Regulatory issues relate to the growth of the landfill and municipal projects. "The plans for the construction of waste incineration plants are an impairment of the landfill biogas plants factor." In the present proposal amending the waste Act, there is a provision that the thermal treatment of MSW is the goal of energy recovery, and this is the process for waste recycling "Posen of Kurczyna noticed." "Such a legacy is not communities motivate systems for selective collection of bio-waste, such as to create: food and kitchen waste from households;" Gastronomy and catering; Retail unit; "Companies produce or sell food."

He introducing the European Commission set goals added, relating to the selective collection and bio-waste treatment associated, could improve the situation. "Such a system of the collection with new units, powered by natural gas in anaerobic digestion plant for food and cuisine created the replacement of existing electricity from biogas landfill would result in losing."

Great potential for the future

Jagoda Sumicka the future of the industry on the development of biogas plants perceived set. "Currently Poland uses to produce about 2 percent of the potential for biogas from agricultural waste." "This potential can be used extensively but only if the industry can overcome considerable and unfortunately especially bureaucratic obstacles to investment."

Poldanor Brodziak develop stated, an optimum size for biogas plants the answer could for the scale of the industry. "The recent proposal for a new law on RES in Poland promotes so-called micro biogas plants." Seven years experience in the operation of biogas plants I have an opinion that could 1 MWe plants are considered optimal size and capacity both in terms of the practical operational aspects and in particular on the profitability. I expect that we see a number of projects with capacity approx. 1 MW and larger. "

For landfill biogas projects, the situation is slightly different. Kurczyna explains: "in the last years, the difficulties in the development was more biogas plants, that it too many small and medium-sized sites." Most of them are too small to be biogas, to receive, which makes it impossible to either use them to burn.