It was PSL MP Marek Sawicki who recently denounced from the parliamentary rostrum that camouflaged lobbyists are hindering the development of agricultural biogas plants in Poland, and foreign oil companies are currently buying Polish substrate to meet their own emission indicators. As if in response to this voice, the government suddenly intensified work on the development of the biogas sector and comes out with a whole litany of proposals on how to support the construction of biogas plants.
However, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the government, having too little, wants too much at once, or is at a crossroads, unable to decide whether to support the small or the large. Either ours or aliens…
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Sawicki: Economic sabotage of the development of biogas plants and emission-free food in Poland
Government proposals
Deputy Minister of Climate Miłosz Motyka announced a whole range of solutions at the meeting of the joint parliamentary committees for agriculture, energy, climate and state assets last Friday that are intended to fuel the development of the biogas industry. This means an increase to PLN 3 billion in the budget for supporting the construction of biogas plants under the "Energy for Rural" program, support for biogas plants with a capacity above 1MW, construction of a direct gas pipeline for biomethane, updating the rules for settling support for biogas plants operating in high-efficiency cogeneration, and easing the penalties of the Energy Regulatory Office for failure to meet energy production limits in contracts.
Motyka also said that the National Energy and Climate Plan will soon be submitted for public consultation, which assumes higher use of biogas power in the domestic energy sector than previously planned. In this plan, the government assumed that the biogas power would increase from 300 MW to 420 MW, and biogas production was planned at a level of up to 2 billion cubic meters.
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Deputy Minister of Agriculture Michał Kołodziejczak told MPs and industry representatives that his ministry is seeking to change the regulations so that a farmer who already has an environmental permit for animal production does not have to obtain environmental permits for the construction of a biogas plant. It is also trying to ease the taxation on biogas plants and give priority to agricultural biogas plants in the queue for connections to energy networks. In addition, MRIRW applied for an increase in the budget for supporting biogas plants to PLN 6 billion by 2030.
German mistakes
Kołodziejczak pointed out that Poland should learn from the mistakes of the Germans, whose biogas sector is now in crisis because biogas plants were focused mainly on electricity production.
– We can avoid their mistakes and build not only biogas plants that will be connected to power lines, but also produce methane and adapt the infrastructure for this purpose – said Kołodziejczak.
Supporting foreign corporations
According to MP Marek Sawicki, the government's support proposals are aimed at the construction of large installations, not small agricultural biogas plants, although this was the assumption behind the measures introduced last year. regulations. This mainly concerns the idea of supporting biogas plants above 1MW. As a result, mainly large foreign concerns will benefit from domestic funds, and not Polish companies and Polish farmers.
-Our energy companies, neither Orlen nor its daughter companies, are ready to build these large installations, because they have neither ready-made designs nor locations. But I assure you that Shell, Total and BP already have such projects, and I say this with full responsibility, said Sawicki.
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Give farmers a chance
Sawicki warned that activating support from the Polish KPO for large biogas installations directly means supporting foreign companies, because they will immediately get the money. Instead, the government should first direct funds to farmers and distributed energy production.
-Give farmers a chance to earn money first and achieve zero-emission meat production in a distributed system. At the same time, where we have industrial and agricultural production, let's allow Orlen to participate in this process – Sawicki appealed to MPs and ministers.
The former Minister of Agriculture recalled that the Act on biogas plants adopted last year also with the votes of the opposition, which is currently in power, "gives full opportunities to build small agricultural biogas plants", and also allows processing plants to build installations, which will soon have to account for their carbon footprint.
-A small biogas plant, a medium-sized biogas plant, is currently the cheapest energy storage that can stabilize the network – argued Sawicki.
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Greater support and improved regulations for agricultural biogas plants 
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Investment in a biogas plant. This is worth paying attention to
