Brussels celebrates the biogas boom at European Biomethane Week — exactly what we don’t need

This week more than 800 biogas producers, farmers’ lobbyists, energy executives, investors and politicians gather in Brussels for the European Biomethane Week. For the past years, we’ve been campaiging against biogas expansion: While it can support the energy transition on a small scale, it risks locking in industrial farming. Here are our main remarks:

Under the theme “Made in Europe” the organizers are pitching biomethane as the cornerstone of EU energy independence — a message the EU’s Energy Commissioner will endorse with an opening keynote. Planned investment in biogas has jumped to €36 billion, up 28% in a single year. More growth is expected with the EU’s goal of producing 35 billion cubic metres (bcm) of biomethane a year by 2030 — well over the 5 bcm produced last year.

Gas from sewage sludge and unavoidable organic waste, tightly regulated and used where nothing better exists, can cut emissions somewhat. But that is not what this boom is about. The majority will be invested into the plants that extract methane from Europe’s cattle and pig manure — a feedstock the industry expects to supply a third of EU biomethane by 2030.

Denmark shows the risks involved. Our research, together with NOAH-Friends of the Earth Denmark, found that pig numbers rose 8% between 2010 and 2024 in the four municipalities with the most biogas plants, while the national herd shrank. Farms in these areas halved in number and doubled in size. Meeting Denmark’s 2030 biogas target will require 94% of today’s pigs and cattle to still be around.

Nor is this “Made in Europe”. Europe’s livestock runs on imported feed: soy and maize from the Americas, grown with fertiliser made from imported gas. The EU uses an area abroad the size of the Benelux plus Denmark just to grow soy for its animals. And over 70% of farmland at home feeds livestock instead of people. 

Public money can be spent only once. Every euro sunk into manure infrastructure is a euro not spent on wind, solar, insulation, or farmers switching to more sustainable land-based agriculture. On a small scale, biomethane can support the energy transition. But the boom that’s celebrated at European Biomethane Week risks becoming a subsidy for factory farming.

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