The European Union wants to produce 35 billion cubic metres of biomethane by 2030, a sevenfold increase on current output and enough, in theory, to replace the Russian gas that stopped flowing after the invasion of Ukraine. The target appeared in the REPowerEU plan in May 2022 and has been repeated in Brussels ever since. Three years on, Europe has the technology, the feedstock, and willing investors. What it lacks is the regulatory architecture to put them together.
The logic is simple; the plumbing is not
Biomethane is chemically identical to fossil gas. It flows through the same pipes, burns in the same boilers, powers the same trucks. Unlike liquefied natural gas from Qatar or pipeline deliveries from Algeria, it depends on no shipping lanes, transit states, or foreign-policy calculations. Every cubic metre produced locally is one fewer that needs importing. The geopolitical case writes itself. So does the climate argument: biomethane captures methane that would otherwise leak from manure lagoons and landfills, converting a potent greenhouse gas into usable fuel. Denmark already draws a quarter of its gas consumption from biomethane. Germany and Italy are not far behind.
Scale, however, remains the obstacle. Most biomethane plants are small, rural, and connected to low-pressure distribution grids near the farms and food factories that supply them. Europe’s gas network was built to move molecules in one direction - from large import terminals and production fields down to consumers. Reaching 35 billion cubic metres requires that logic to reverse: gas produced at the village level must flow upward into the high-pressure transmission system and, eventually, across borders.
Reverse flow, on paper
The European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas (ENTSOG), which represents the continent’s gas pipeline operators, calls this “reverse flow.” Its latest network development plan found that only two countries - France and Denmark - have formally planned for it. The rest are still working out how, or whether, to proceed.
There are narrower technical problems, too. Biomethane can contain more oxygen than fossil gas, which affects combustion characteristics. The EU’s stated principle is that such differences should not restrict cross-border trade, but harmonising gas specifications across 27 member states is slow, committee-heavy work. The Guarantees of Origin system, designed to let traders buy and sell biomethane certificates across the single market, depends on a Union Database that remains under construction.
Piero Gattoni, president of the European Biogas Association, said developers would commit capital only when the regulatory environment was “consistent, predictable, and supportive across the value chain.” Where those conditions existed, plants were going up at record speed. Where they did not, nothing got built at all.
Slovenia’s particular frustration
Slovenia is not a major player in European biogas, and it knows it. The country has two operational biogas plants, both run by Pannonia Bio Gas, which together account for roughly half of national output. They have been fermenting organic waste and chicken slurry into methane since 2012. Franc Dover, who took over as chief executive last year, has spent much of his tenure trying to determine whether expansion is viable. He is still waiting for the government to clarify whether it is possible.
The feedstock, Dover said, was not the constraint. Slovenians discard more than 70 kilograms of food waste per person each year - roughly a third of everything they buy - and the country’s composting facilities cannot absorb it all. Secondary crops rot in fields. Supermarket stock passes its sell-by date. Livestock operations produce slurry with nowhere useful to go. The digesters could take all of it.
The constraint is regulatory. Biogas in Slovenia falls across the jurisdictions of three ministries - environment, energy, and agriculture - without sitting comfortably in any of them. The result is a patchwork of rules that do not quite cohere.
The KOPOP problem
One example is telling. The KOPOP scheme, a subsidy programme that pays farmers to adopt environmentally friendly practices, imposes strict caps on fertiliser use. Digestate - the nutrient-rich residue left after anaerobic fermentation - counts against those caps, treated identically to synthetic fertiliser. It makes no difference that digestate is organic, that it returns nitrogen to the soil without the carbon footprint of industrial alternatives. Farmers who depend on KOPOP payments will not risk their subsidies by accepting it. The circular economy, in this case, runs into the subsidy regime and stops.
Then there is local opposition. Biogas has an image problem, most of it out of date. Modern plants are enclosed, the fermentation is anaerobic, and the output is odourless methane. None of that counts for much when a permit application reaches a village council. Residents hear “digester” and picture truck traffic, industrial smells, and blight. The technical reality seldom overcomes the gut reaction.
What might change
A new law, ZSROVE-1, is expected next year. It would establish a dedicated support framework for renewable gases, setting out how biomethane producers are compensated and on what terms they connect to the grid. Industry groups have been lobbying for a combination of measures: subsidies to close the cost gap with fossil gas, grants to help existing plants upgrade to biomethane production, and a blending mandate requiring a minimum share of renewable gas in the network to guarantee demand.
Dover, based in Dobrovnik in the country’s northeast, is cautiously optimistic. He has the feedstock, the technology, and a decade of operational experience. What he needs is a legislative framework, investor-grade incentives, and some way past the local planning objections that stall every new site.
He frames it in terms that go beyond the balance sheet. Those who lived through the energy shocks of the twentieth century, the upheaval of independence, the financial crisis, COVID-19, and now war on the EU’s eastern border understand what self-sufficiency means, he said. Energy, food, water, waste - when the sources narrow, the lesson is always the same. “We have to use every possible source for sustainable living and coexistence with nature,” he said. “Biogas is one of the big ones.”