Scandinavian Biogas Builds a Large-scale Biogas Plant in Mönsterås, Sweden

The facility is built in collaboration with local farmers and will produce liquefied biogas (Bio-LNG) with manure as feedstock. The production capacity is estimated to be 120 GWh, and the production is planned to start in Q4 2024.

Mönsterås is located in Kalmar County, and is characterized by many agricultural facilities where the production generates manure in large quantities that may limit operations. By using manure as feedstock for biogas production, a sustainable cycle is created while it allows the farmers to further grow their operations. Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s (Naturvårdsverket) Climate Leap Initiative (Klimatklivet) granted the project 154 million SEK in economic support in 2021, which is within the framework of announced growth and production capacity targets for the year 2024. The project provides an excellent rate of emission reduction per invested SEK.

”We have worked for many years to find a sustainable solution for our operations as the production of manure has become a limitation for us. The collaboration with Scandinavian Biogas brings us a solution that will manage the normal methane emissions, while simultaneously lowering the carbon dioxide emissions in the transport sector. There will be considerable environmental benefits from the local production of food, when taking the whole cycle into consideration”, says Olof Boson who is a farmer and chairman of the board of Mönsterås Biogas.

The liquefied biogas will mainly be sold as fuel to the transport sector (maritime and heavy transports) where 120 GWh is the equivalent of 12 million liters of diesel. The refined biofertilizer will mainly be used in the local agricultural production in order to maintain a sustainable cycle.

”It feels good to finally have everything in order and that we have received green light to start the project. The farmers need this biogas plant in order to be able to further develop their operations and our customers in Europe are in great need of fossile-free gas”, says Michael Wallis Olausson, Chief Growth Officer at Scandinavian Biogas.

The biogas project in Mönsterås was initiated by local farmers in 2016, and Scandinavian Biogas got involved two years ago. The parties formed a jointly owned company with the responsibility to design, build, and manage the planned biogas plant. Scandinavian Biogas owns an estimated 86 percent of the production company Scandinavian Biogas Mönsterås AB, while the remaining 17 percent is owned by the local farmers through their company Mönsterås Biogas AB.

The biogas project in Mönsterås will be the first in line of the projects that we will develop in collaboration with local farmers. We believe that local ownership is important, to make sure that parts of the future revenues also remain local. The benefits of liquefied biogas with manure as feedstock are obvious,and enable a green transition for locally produced food products as well as for heavy transports. This is another important step for us at Scandinavian Biogas towards our long-term vision of a total production capacity of 3 TWh by the year 2030”, says Matti Vikkula, CEO of Scandinavian Biogas.

Olof Boson, farmer and chairman of Mönsterås Biogas says: ”The production of manure has become a limitiation for us, but this project brings us a solution that will manage the normal methane emissions of manure while simultaneously lowering the carbon dioxide emissions in the transport sector”.

The biogas plant will be delivered by the Portuguese company Efacec SA in consortium with the Swedish company Multibygg AB. The facility for gas upgrade and liquefaction will be delivered by the Swedish company Wärtsilä AB.

Facts about the project:

Energy, production capacity: 120 GWh (liquefied biogas)
Production of manure: 200 000 tonnes returned to farmers
Main substrate: Est. 300 000 tonnes of local manure and green mass
Planned start of production: Q4 2024
Estimated gross investment: Est. 760 MSEK