Season 4 episode 6 - Biogas in Poland: harvesting energy

For this sixth episode, we are heading to the Wicie biogas production plant, not far from Warsaw in Poland. Magdalena Myszczyszyn, Biogas Partnerships & Origination Director at Polska Grupa Biogazowa (PGB), shows us how the agri-food industry and energy sector can work hand-in-hand to produce low-carbon energy.

CNBC - TotalEnergies

Poland is a very beautiful country. But when I was a child, it was not that easy like in many other West European countries. We went through a big transformation. Our economy has been growing very fast, but we paid the price. Very big dependence on the fossil fuels. In the same time, we have a great food and agriculture industries which generate a lot of natural bio waste. Waste are used in the biogas plants and those biogas plants can produce energy. I feel I’m doing something good for my country and I’m doing something good for the world.

Our environment is very diverse. We have mountains, over 500 km of coast, extremely beautiful lakes. In many ways we can say that Poland is a natural paradise. Poland is very rich in the agriculture business. We have a very fertile land and it means we export over €50 billion of the agricultural food and products every year. But about 70% of the energy in Poland comes from coal. It definitely has to change.

There is a natural solution and great connection between our agriculture business and renewable energy. The process is very simple. Organic matter is waste coming from food and agriculture. You put the waste into digestion tanks. They produce biogas. The biogas then produces heat and electricity. This electricity we can put into the electricity grid.

This one megawatt biogas plant can supply approximately 3000 households in electricity and heat per year. Some of the heat we produce on the biogas plant is used as a service for furniture companies to dry the wood they’re using for production.

After the process, we are left with the waste which can be used as fertilizer for the farmers. This is absolutely amazing, we don’t lose anything, it’s completely circular. We close the loop.

TotalEnergies is the biggest and first biogas producer in Poland. All our activity, all our biogas plants are monitored in one room in our headquarters in Warsaw. Our existing 18 biogas plants can power up to 57,000 households per year. Biogas is just the beginning. The target which we have in Poland is biomethane, which is renewable gas. It will be the next step to decrease the CO₂ emission. Poland has a great agriculture potential, which can make us the largest bioenergy producer in Europe. The job I’m doing has a purpose. It makes me feel that I’m a part of something bigger.

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