Powerco announces renewable gas projects

Left to right: Powerco’s David Hendry and Don Elers with Hamish Waugh from Manawatu District Council

Powerco’s kicking off two initiatives in Manawatu to investigate turning waste into pipeline-ready renewable natural gas to help New Zealand decarbonise.

The joint projects will explore the upgrading of biogas, currently produced from both a landfill and a waste water treatment plant, to renewable natural gas (biomethane). 

Over the next 12 months the team will be conducting technical analysis and engineering design to understand what’s required to bring the biogas to pipeline specification and inject into the network. 

General Manager, Gas, Don Elers says the initiatives are part of Powerco’s commitment to use renewable natural gas in its networks in the future.

“The opportunity to capture and use biogas has a host of environmental benefits including reducing New Zealand’s emissions from organic waste and the use of natural gas, reducing the amount of waste going to landfill, and creating a sustainable alternative to natural gas.”

 One project is with the Manawatu District Council, using biogas from its wastewater treatment plant near Feilding and the other is with private company, Midwest Disposals, which operates a landfill near Marton in Rangitikei.

The projects will assess the technical and economic viability of bringing the biogas that’s currently being captured and flared at both sites up to the same standard as natural gas and injecting it into Powerco’s gas pipeline network.

Elers says the technology that upgrades biogas into renewable natural gas is not too different from how gas was produced from coal in the past, but New Zealand’s supply of cheap natural gas meant it hasn’t been needed here.

But now, with New Zealand’s goal of being carbon-neutral by 2050, alternatives to traditional natural gas are being actively considered.

“New Zealand has been served very well with affordable cheap gas but that’s going to change. The cost of carbon’s going to influence that.”

Powerco’s manager of renewable gas, David Hendry, says they are really just adopting off-the-shelf technology, “so once a business decision is made to go ahead, it really won’t take long”.

Powerco wants to bring the manufacturing, agricultural, waste and energy sectors together, with the aim of developing network of gas production sites around its regions, feeding into the gas pipeline network.

“It will be much like we’re seeing in the electricity sector, where we’re having distributed generation coming online in different parts of the network,” Don Ellers says.

“In the future we see distributed regions having their own gas injection points.”

Manager of infrastructure at Manawatu District Council, Hamish Waugh, says the initiative fits with the council’s vision of turning waste is into valuable products.

“We want to work with private industry, who’ve got the capital to do things like this,” he says.

“Manawatu fits well with Powerco’s network, because we’re at the crossroad between Taranaki, Hawke’s Bay and Wellington.

“We want to take as much energy and money as possible out of the waste stream for the benefit of the community and to have minimal impact on the environment.”