Biomethane - Foodrise EU

What's the problem?

Biomethane is a renewable gas produced by refining biogas, which comes from the breakdown of organic materials like food waste, manure, or crops. It can be used similarly to fossil gas for heating, electricity, transport, and industry.

Sounds quite good, right? But unfortunately it is more complex than the industry and European Commission currently proclaim. Instead of irresponsibly scaling up the production of biomethane, food waste could be prevented, heat and transport could be powered by wind and solar, meat and dairy production and consumption could be reduced, and nature restored.

Badly designed biomethane policies, driven by the interests of meat, dairy, and fossil fuel companies, create perverse incentives that promote and expand animal factories, lock in fossil fuel infrastructure, undermine efforts to prevent food waste, and intensify both global and local injustices.

Credits: urbancow, iStock

Our solutions

We are pushing for EU and Member State policies that keep biomethane production within its sustainable niche. This means getting the scale right based on the best available science, focusing on truly sustainable feedstocks, and designing incentives that strengthen better alternatives, not undermine them.

Biomethane touches on various major challenges: emission reductions in our food system, land use, soil health, food availability, exploitation of animals, and our future energy system. As one of the first organisations, we set up a dedicated program on biomethane in 2020. Now, we are teaming up with dedicated organisations and movements at EU, national, and local level to campaign smarter, act faster, and build a united, effective voice for real sustainability and justice.

Our goals are clear:

Push European and national policymakers to introduce strong, targeted measures that keep biomethane production within sustainable limits.
Make biomethane a key concern for a powerful group of civil society organisations across European countries and Brussels.
Shift the public narrative — exposing the real land, climate, and food risks of biomethane, as well as their impacts on people — and create the political momentum needed to drive science-based policy decisions.

Read our latest report on biomethane

Our impact

We need to burst the biomethane bubble

We conducted extensive research to assess the risks of a large-scale increase in biomethane production and the danger of locking ourselves into unsustainable and unfair food and energy systems. Our work offers a counter to the greenwashing narratives pushed by some policy-makers and industry.
We launched the StopTheBiomethaneRush coalition: a collaboration between organisations at both local, national, and EU level, built to exchange knowledge, develop joint strategies, and push a critical debate around biomethane higher up the political agenda.
We presented our research at a major industry conference, despite being the online civil society organisation in the room. We sparked new discussions and bursted the biomethane bubble!