{"id":2053341,"date":"2026-07-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2053341"},"modified":"2026-07-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T21:00:00","slug":"is-better-biogas-the-next-big-thing-in-the-world-of-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2053341","title":{"rendered":"Is better biogas the next big thing in the world of cars?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Releasing methane into the atmosphere is far more destabilising for the climate than CO2<\/sub>. Oil drilling and refining is a major methane source. Other sources are waste tips and farming\/livestock. Methane emerges when organic matter in piles of waste and dung decays in the absence of oxygen \u2013 anaerobic digestion (AD).<\/p>\n

Fortunately, AD can be harnessed, so the methane can be collected and used productively. A large gas-tight vessel holds the waste while the process happens naturally. It\u2019s not new. Many local councils in Britain are already sending collected food waste to AD. But sulphur compounds, CO2<\/sub>, oxides of nitrogen and water vapour also come out of the digester, and it has been hard to separate them out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Recent developments look promising. Suzuki makes two-fifths of India\u2019s cars, and many run on CNG \u2013 which is mainly methane. India has 200 million cows. That\u2019s a lot of dung. So Suzuki has developed new optimisations for refining the output of ADs. But what about the lost dung, which is a good fertiliser and displaces the artificial stuff? Fortunately the solid matter that comes out of AD is also good for the soil.<\/p>\n

The resulting fuel helps fight climate change. Even if only burned, the tailpipe CO2<\/sub> is less aggressive than the methane it displaces, and anyway the source of the CO2<\/sub> in the first place is the growing of grass which the cows ate, which abstracts CO2<\/sub> from the atmosphere. Of course that\u2019s an inefficient process compared with humans eating plants, but turning the world vegan is probably a bigger ask.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Meanwhile in Brittany, Sublime Energy has developed a process to liquefy the output of small on-farm ADs. It then goes in tankers to a central processing hub to separate the methane from the by-product gases. Otherwise you\u2019d need expensive separation equipment on each farm.<\/p>\n

So these projects, if scaled, could support rural economies, improve energy sovereignty and green the energy system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Also the methane, AKA biogas, can of course fuel gas power stations, or go into the gas network for home and industrial heat. Liquefied gas is also a pretty good fuel for trucks and buses \u2013 Oslo has converted its entire bus fleet. But there\u2019s too little waste to fuel more than a small fraction of the world\u2019s vehicles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Releasing methane into the atmosphere is far more destabilising for the climate than CO2. Oil drilling and refining is a major methane source. Other sources are waste tips and farming\/livestock. Methane emerges when organic matter in piles of waste and dung decays in the absence of oxygen \u2013 anaerobic digestion (AD). Fortunately, AD can be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-2053341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2053341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2053341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2053341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2053341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2053341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2053341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}