September 26, 2023. The European Biogas Association (EBA), together with the Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas (RNG Coalition), met last week with Pankaj Bhatia, Global Director of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol at World Resources Institute, during the New York Climate Week. They discussed the growing production and use of biomethane in Europe and North America and explored possibilities for future collaboration to facilitate the accounting and reporting of biomethane certificates under the GHG Protocol. Recognition of sustainable biomethane certificates will be key in delivering the sustainable scale-up of the sector to reach the 35 bcm biomethane production target in Europe by 2030.
The GHG Protocol, jointly created by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, provides a framework for companies to measure their GHG emissions and report on their decarbonization targets. It has become one of the most widely used frameworks worldwide with more than 2,100 large companies in Europe using it. Yet, the GHG Protocol still does not have accounting rules for biomethane certificates, which contain the certified GHG emissions of the consumption of biomethane and represent the predominant way in which biomethane is purchased.
The meeting was therefore the opportunity for leaders of the biogases value chain and the World Resource Institute to discuss the process to include the treatment of biomethane certificates under the GHG Protocol. They agreed on the urgency to define a reliable and solid methodology for biomethane certificates, as more and more companies using the GHG Protocol framework look to biomethane to decarbonize their activities. They decided to leverage their organizations’ expertise to speed up the process of developing new rules for the accounting of biomethane certificates, such as EU Proofs of sustainability, in the GHG inventory of companies. EBA, along with RNG Coalition, committed to provide in the coming months expertise to the World Resource Institute concerning the certification and documentation of biomethane in the European Union and North America. They specifically agreed on plans for a workshop in 2024.
