In the UK, biomethane is not a viable option for replacing fossil fuels to heat UK homes at scale, a new report commissioned by The MCS Foundation has found. While gas companies have claimed that biomethane can heat “millions” of homes within a few years, energy experts Regen found that, even under the most optimistic scenarios, biomethane could provide no more than 18% of the UK’s current gas demand by 2050.
Their analysis found that biomethane supply will be limited by the availability of ‘feedstocks’ including food waste, sewage and farm manure, competing uses for these, and whether they can meet strict sustainability rules, since some can create higher carbon emissions than fossil gas and crops grown for energy raise concerns about land use.
The MCS Foundation, which commissioned the report, says that electrification, not attempts to decarbonize the gas grid via biomethane, is the only viable way to decarbonize home heating at scale.
The report calls on the Government not to allow confusion about gas’s potential role in a future energy system to delay the shift to electrified heating. Instead, focus should be placed on targeting biomethane use at hard-to-decarbonize sectors such as high-temperature industrial processes and non-road transport. This would require the Government to develop a framework for prioritizing the most effective and efficient uses of biomethane.
