France’s General Accountability Office, in French Cour des Comptes, the public comptroller which rational organization dates back to Napoleonic times (1807 precisely), has recently published a 260-page report on the biogas value chain public support strategy, unusually stating: “It is useless to develop a pathway which is not sustainable for its end-users”. Wow!
The program under criticism is aiming at 50 TWh biogas production by 2030, a mere fraction of the 400-500 TWh natural gas consumption in France. This is a range that has become quite wide these days in Europe, since the start of the war in Ukraine. High prices are impacting housing and industry bills and usage, and are also highly dependent on the relative health of the nuclear and renewable modes of electricity generation, natural gas power plants being the adjustment tool for supply and demand of electrons to meet at any given moment.
Natural gas is seen by many as THE transition energy, between coal and solar or wind, and the 2024 IEA Energy Outlook confirms the quasi-stability of natural gas demand in the decades to come, should countries carry on with their present strategies, carefully balancing citizens’ wallets and de-fossilization of energy (so-called STEPS scenario, graph below). As natural gas usage is not CO2 emission free, global Net Zero Emission in 2050 seems unattainable in its STEPS scenario, unless natural gas is displaced by onerous low-carbon alternatives, biogas and e-methane, produced from low-carbon hydrogen and captured CO2.
Onerous is the key word here. Alas, this qualification also applies to many “green” transition technologies, as for hydrogen in transport.
Consider hydrogen in public transport, for instance. 378 buses were commercialized in Europe in 2024, a whopping 82% increase compared to 2023, and 40 % of all commercialized hydrogen buses since 2012, but also a ridiculously low 0.05% of the pool. Hydrogen faces stiff competition due to pricing, maintenance, and safety concerns—especially from electric buses, which make up 95% of the zero-emission bus market. Still, all zero-emission buses together account for only 1% of total fleet renewals. How many decades before the pool is fully zero emission? Still, the European Commission insists that hydrogen is a must in the Clean Industrial Deal, dishing out billions to support the numerous actors of this energy, either in production, powertrains or commercialization.
In aviation, as well: the famous e-SAF, brainchild of the German, now doomed, Energiewende of the previous decade. EASA, the European body in charge of safety in aviation, just published reference prices for low-carbon aviation fuels. These prices are to be used by European nations’ regulators to enforce SAF incorporation in 2025, the first year ReFuel EU Aviation exists in European skies, in other terms, to set penalties for non-compliance.
The market being minuscule in 2024, EASA computed production costs: bio-SAF is at 1461 €/t, already twice the price of fossil jet-fuel (734 €/t), e-SAF is at 7695 €/t, 5 times higher, 10 times the price of fossil. e-SAF production cost is mostly made of low-carbon electricity cost and electrolyzer Capex contribution, the latter unlikely to show a significant decrease in the future. In 2024, the average wholesale electricity price for industrial users in the EU was €59/MWh. However, France’s state-owned electricity producer, EDF, aims to secure at least €70–80/MWh to finance its current and future nuclear fleet. One potential approach is EU-wide auctions, where deep-pocketed end-users—such as AI-driven data centers—would likely bid aggressively to guarantee access to low-carbon electricity.
Not even mentioning the cost to connect the renewable electricity production sites to the grid, in the hundreds of billions range. Then, who can believe in e-SAF competitiveness or even in future viability of air transport in Europe, the only region with a serious SAF regulation, when e-SAF incorporation mandate becomes significant, as early as 2035, ten years from now?
As for using hydrogen as a direct fuel in a plane, Airbus has declared a 5 to 10 years delay for the birth of its first model.
The 2025 geopolitical turmoil and focus on defense spending in Europe may eventually be the trigger for a serious revision in green and grand plans, obviously off-limits from an economic sustainability point of view, and in urgent need of a broadside volley. Reassessing priorities and dedicating public support to advanced R&D, DARPA-style, may be more profitable to fight climate change than spending billions on dead end technologies that have anyway no or limited impact on CO2 emissions in the short term.
Philippe Marchand is a Bioenergy Steering Committee Member of the European Technology and Innovation Platform (ETIP).
