NV Nederlandse Gasunie is a European gas infrastructure company providing transport and conversion of natural gas and green gas in the Netherlands and northern Germany. Gasunie believes that a sustainable – carbon-neutral – energy future benefits from a substantial amount of renewable gas as a basis for energy supply in an increasingly intermittent renewable energy supply situation, and providing sustainable energy to gas consumers who are not really able to substitute gas with other sources of energy. Since land-based biomass sources are limited and possibly in conflict with the food supply, renewable gas from offshore biomass sources is of paramount importance for achieving a substantial share of renewable gas in the future energy mix. Gasunie’s interest in this project is related to the distribution of renewable energy that can be brought to shore through the implementation of the GOA-Ventures technology.

Gasunie has extensive experience in cleaning, upgrading and transporting a diversity of gases, both natural gas from fossil sources as well biogas from renewable sources. As such, Gasunie’s contribution to GOA-Ventures lies in a number of areas that include yet are not limited to the following: implementing biomass fermentation or biomass gasification processes, gas cleaning, gas conversion, gas liquefaction, gas compression, and gas transport.

The GOA-Ventures project will convert biomass to protein products and the residual biomass will be converted to biogas through fermentation or gasification. The biogas can be further converted or upgraded to natural gas that can be fed back into the existing natural gas grid, making the renewable green gas available to all of the parties that are connected to that gas grid. In this respect, given its range of expertise and experience, Gasunie covers an important part of the GOA-Ventures value chain by converting the biomass to the desired quality of gas and making it available to a wide range of customers (suppliers) that are already connected to the gas grid.

As Gasunie’s role is strictly infrastructural. Through its subsidiary New Energy, Gasunie participates in a number of ventures and partnerships which are focused on innovative gasification technologies, and the cleaning and upgrading of biogas to the quality and composition of natural gas such as that available in the gas grid. This expertise will be crucial in the GOA-Ventures cooperation in order to analyse the residual biomass composition after protein extraction and, in turn, to select and implement the appropriate cleaning and upgrading technology to convert biomass to biogas.

Gasunie is a gas infrastructure company in the Netherlands and Germany, owning and operating around 15,500 kilometres of pipelines and complementary installations such as compressor, bleeding, metering and regulating, export and gas delivery stations as well as LNG storage, and underground gas and nitrogen storage.  This infrastructure offers a widespread area for feeding biogas into the gas grid and making the gas available to customers throughout that region.

Gasunie founded the subsidiary Gasunie New Energy to facilitate and stimulate the transition to renewable energy, cooperating with partners throughout the energy value chain to integrate renewable energy sources into the energy mix such as biogas, syngas and heat.  Gasunie has specific technical and business knowledge and access to additional know-how via partnerships with third parties to convert biomass streams into gas that is suitable for feeding into the gas grid.