As biomethane is the cheapest and most rapidly scalable renewable gas, the European Commission has announced in its recent REPowerEU plan an target to increase the EU production to 35bcm/year in 2030. In September 2022 the Biomethane Industrial Partnership (BIP) was launched; a public-private partnership between the European Commission, EU Member States and the biomethane value chain to jointly work towards achieving this goal. Several Task Forces are working on a specific topic. The focus of Task Force 2’s work is accelerated project development.Atmove is working in the Taskforce 2.5 responsible for biomethane production and distribution from small and medium plants far from the grid. The vast majority of all 20,000 biogas plants in Europe still only produces electricity and heat without upgrading to biomethane, today, there are only 1,076 biomethane plants. In September the consolidated strategies will be published. We are proud to contribute to this important initiative, learning from experts from all over Europe.

At the end of February 2023, we had the pleasure to host a Colombian delegation accompanied by the Chamber of Commerce and the EU Low Carbon Action Latam in Austria. After a visit to the biogas plant of our partner EVM, we discussed with the delegates the possibilities of biogas and biomethane for the decarbonization of Columbia by substituting natural Gas and oil. This meeting was followed by an invitation to the international congress NATURGAS in Barranquilla at the end of May 2023, where Georg Wagner could speak on the topic of biogas and biomethane on the one hand and what he learned from the Brazilian biogas market. On the other hand the conference gave us the opportunity to meet important people from politics and industry: the Minister of Environment, representatives of the big oil and gas companies as well as energy and infrastructure companies. Atmove will deepen the contacts established and will concretize and implement jointly envisaged projects for biogas production and use.

Atmove had the privilege to support the initiative of the BMK (Ministry for Climate Protection, Energy, Mobility, Innovation) to develop the project “renewable energies and green hydrogen in Tunisia” in the framework of a Lab of Tomorrow© GIZ in cooperation with ICEP in collaborative processes with renowned Austrian energy and technology companies. Atmove has prepared preparatory market studies, led the design thinking workshops in which the common vision was developed, Atmove has moderated the UNIDO conference in Tunis in which the H2 experts were brought together bilaterally and Atmove has coached an ideation sprint with local experts and Austrian companies in which 2 concrete project ideas were developed which are now to be implemented.

Link to BMK Mission Tunisia

Together with a high-level consortium of Arteria Technolgies, Avoris, the FH Technikum Wien and the company Quadratic, a research project supported by the FFG is currently being carried out. The aim is to simulate the high decarbonization potential of the new market model of energy communities in different demonstration projects and to develop a guideline for the planning and implementation of renewable from the different requirements in order to be able to manage the organizational-legal and technical-economic challenges more easily. In the context of the EU project SONDER, Atmove had the privilege to facilitate a design thinking workshop that focused on concrete stakeholder needs and possible financing. Atmove will also concretely implement an energy community in the property of the office location 2023 and install a PV system plus storage.

Georg Wagner and Markus Althausen have conducted an extensive study for the market launch of the innovative technology of mobile biogas upgrading MOBI in the Brazilian market. The study shows that BioCNG is far superior to other fuel routes in terms of cost, especially in heavy transport, and can also save costs with up to 100% CO2 savings compared to diesel. Atmove has established cooperation with Scania and other local companies in Latam and Brazil, MOBI’s technology has been adapted to market needs, a business model for BioCNG regions has been developed and potential pilot regions have been identified. Currently, prototype construction is planned and a pilot region is selected with the Brazilian partners.

Watch the video

Atmove attended the 9th Forum Biogas, the leading event in Latin America about Biogas and Biomethane. 2 Days of important speeches and presentations showed the accelerating development of biogas and biomethane in Brazil and all the important players have been present. The Forum was a perfect opportunity to network and to connext with almost 600 attendees from different industries. Atmove could further develop it´s market know how, especially about BioCNG applications in the heavy transport sector. Georg Wagner and Ulf Mannhardt, who is supporting Atmove locally in Brazil, found the assumptions about the Brazilien BioCNG market proofed.

North of Sao Paulo there is a sugar cane farm that is combined with fattening of cattle. Atmove developed a feasibility study to evaluate the potential for biogas production from manure and sugar cane. The technological and economical evaluation of the utilization of the various feedstock and sugar cane in anaerobic digestion plants was the goal. The results showed that not only the biogas production for different use cases like energy&heat supply to substitute the existing costs and BioCNG production to substitute the diesel costs are relevant, but also the supply of the farm with fertilizer from own production improves the business radically. Additionally the methane emissions of the manure can be avoided and carbon credits can be generated in a future biogas project.

Atmove´s business strategy is based on such networks. We started a new cooperation with EVM, the biggest biogas plant in Austria. It produces 550m3 Biomethane (1.100m3 biogas) per hour. Atmove will use the cooperation with EVM with 15 years of experience as a reference plant in our international market development for technical visits of interested customers to experience how biogas technology can work!

Atmove was selected as the winner of the Austrian SDG award! Under the patronage of the Austrian Chancellor Atmove received this SDG award as an example of a solution, that can help the world to reduce the fuel costs for farmers by 50% and at the same time reduce 100% of the CO2 emissions. Especially the SDGs 13, 9 and 7 are supported by Atmove.

The German Biogas Association recommended Georg Wagner to Dr. Thomas Isenburg as an expert for the Brazilian Biogas Market. In the magazine “Energie aus Pflanzen” we could talk about our partnership with CIBiogas and the development of the Biogas Map, which will be online soon, showing the potentials and substrates of agricultural residues in southern Brazil. This will be a part of the World Bank Project that is currently executed by CIBiogas and the MCTIC (Ministery of Mines, Communication and Innovation). Of course, we also had to mention our Biomethane Mobility Approach.

We had a very interesting discussion with the product manager Nilson Righi of CNH Latin America about the biomethane mobility and the Brazilian biogas reality. He showed us the new biomethane tractor from New Holland, which is part of a global initiative of all CNH brands to reduce CO2 emissions. As Atmove is focussing on the same topic since 2012 with the CH4pa and the Mobile Upgrading Unit developments, we could exchange a lot of strategic considerations about the introduction of biomethane tractors into the Brazilian market. We decided to continue those discussions in the future.

Since 2013 Atmove has a formal cooperation about biogas and biomethane (see 4:30 of this youtube video) and with the help of the European funded Low Carbon Business Action Brazil, we could develop 3 projects to a business plan: a 1 MW innovative Biogas plant,  the Mobile Upgrading Unit, and the CH4pa.

Atmove is under the 100 best climate impact projects 2019! Mission Innovation, a global government network to identify the best carbon projects worldwide, selected Atmove as one of the global 100 projects to be presented in the governmental meeting in Vancouver 2019. Atmove was also invited at the Austrian Mission Innovation event in 2019.

Together with Alessandro Gardemann, the president of the ABiogas – the Brazilian biogas association, we visited first the AVL in Austria and afterwords the Scania headquarters in Stockholm to discuss possible cooperation between Scania and Brazil in the fields of biogas, biomethane mobility and fuel cells.

Atmove was rewarded by the Schwarzenegger foundation R20 https://www.climateactionstories.com/mobility/atmove and by Mission Innovation https://misolutionframework.net/Innovations?page=2.

In November 21st to 23rd 2017 the “ 2nd Seminar Brazil-Austria for Cooperation on Biogas and Biomethane” happened in the premises of Itaipu. 150 expert were discussing the status of biogas and the perspectives for the technology exchange between Austria and Brazil. The participating organizations of the Austrian Development Association as well as the participants of the FAEP technical missions, from the Austrian Energy Agency Project “Biobraz”, the experts from CIBiogas and Itaipu, representatives of the state of Parana and leading technology and energy companies as well as representatives of the Brazilian government and of the GEF project “Biogas applications for the Brazilian agro-industry” were discussing the challenging topics and visiting the UDCibiogas and the CH4pa at the biomethane filling station.

Together with PTI Atmove co-organized the Event fo the Brazil-Austria Seminar on Sustainable Mobility with Audi, Doppelmayr, AVL, AWO. Atmove promoted a big design thinking workshop to define measures for a more sustainable mobility in Itaipu, Foz de Iguazu and the surrounding regions.

First a special Biogas day was performed together with CIBiogas in the UNIDO headquarter in Vienna. Scania also promoted the advantages of Biomethane as a fuel. The second day Atmove and the CH4pa were presented in the Hofburg and even the General Secretary of UNIDO handed us a price for the performance.

We could present our strategy during the conference organized by IBBK in Schwäbisch Hall/Germany.

In Graz, we could perform a TedX speech to present the Atmove idea for a young and interested community the first time.