By YANGE IKYAA
TotalEnergies and Veolia on Wednesday announced they have signed an agreement to produce biomethane from waste and water treatment facilities operated by Veolia in more than 15 countries.
Veolia is one of the world’s largest producers of energy from biogas, with a primary energy resource of nearly 6 terawatt-hours (TWh). As a world leader in ecological transformation, it aims to maximize the recovery of biogas in the form of biomethane and to expand its global resource base in a circular economy approach, while helping to combat climate change.
On its part, TotalEnergies is a global multi-energy company that produces and markets energies: oil and biofuels, natural gas and green gases, as well as renewables and electricity. Its 105,000 employees are committed to energy that is ever more affordable, cleaner, more reliable and accessible to as many people as possible. Active in more than 130 countries, TotalEnergies puts sustainable development in all its dimensions at the heart of its projects and operations to contribute to the well-being of people.
The two partners say they will develop and co-invest in a portfolio of international projects, with the ambition to produce up to 1.5 terawatt-hours (TWh) of biomethane per year by 2025. Their latest partnership for production of renewable gas from organic waste will be equivalent to the average annual natural gas consumption of 500,000 residents and will avoid some 200,000 tons of CO2 per year. TotalEnergies will market the resulting biomethane as a renewable fuel for mobility or as a substitute for natural gas in other uses.
As part of this agreement, the partners will pool their industrial know-how in biomethane production. Veolia will provide its expertise in the production and processing of biogas from its facilities, and TotalEnergies will contribute its in-depth knowledge of the entire biomethane value chain.
Veolia Group aims to become the benchmark company for ecological transformation. Present on five continents with nearly 179,000 employees, the Group designs and deploys useful, practical solutions for the management of water, waste and energy that are contributing to a radical turnaround of the current situation.
Through its three complementary activities, Veolia helps to develop access to resources, to preserve available resources and to renew them. In 2020, the Veolia group served 95 million inhabitants with drinking water and 62 million with sanitation, produced nearly 43 million megawatt hours and recycled 47 million tonnes of waste. Veolia Environment (Paris Euronext: VIE) achieved consolidated sales of 26.010 billion euros in 2020.
“We are pleased to partner with Veolia to promote the recovery of waste through the production of biomethane, and thereby the circular economy, one of the pillars of sustainable development,” said Stéphane Michel, President Gas, Renewables & Power at TotalEnergies, adding further that “the development of biomethane is part of TotalEnergies’ transformation into a broad energy company, and the deployment of its ambition to be a major player in renewables.”
As the biomethane segment leader in France and with close to 500 GWh of production capacity, TotalEnergies now aims to become a major player in biomethane internationally by partnering with market leaders such as Clean Energy in the United States. The Company is active across the entire biomethane value chain, from project development to marketing of biomethane and its by-products, such as biofertilizers and bioCO2). It also aims to produce at least 2 TWh of biomethane per year by 2025, which is equivalent to the annual consumption of 670,000 French consumers and a reduction in CO2 emissions of 400,000 tons.
According to Estelle Brachlianoff, who is the Chief Operating Officer of Veolia, “our partnership with TotalEnergies is in line with Veolia’s strategy to develop solutions for decarbonizing the energy mix, notably with biogas, as part of an ecological transition. At the global level, the biogas resources at our sites offer more than 6 terawatt hours of primary energy.
“With this biomethane production potential and our know-how in biogas management, Veolia intends to become a leading player in the value chain while developing more decentralized and local green energy production capacity.”
