Gasum to buy renewable e-methane from Nordic Ren-Gas for customers in road and maritime transport

Finnish state-owned energy company Gasum has signed an e-methane offtake agreement with Nordic Ren-Gas. The purchased e-methane will be delivered to customers in the road and maritime transport sectors.

Visualisation of the Nordic Ren-Gas plant in Tampere. Source: Nordic Ren-Gas

Under the long-term agreement, Gasum will buy all of the e-methane to be produced by Nordic Ren-Gas at its power-to-gas plant in Tampere from 2026 and onwards.

Nordic Ren-Gas will develop, build, and operate the Tampere power-togGas plant, which will produce 160 GWh of e-methane annually using renewable electricity from Finnish wind power and biogenic carbon dioxide captured from existing power plants.

“This partnership is a massive game changer with the possibility to expand the availability of renewable gas at an industrial scale. Gasum aims to become a significant player in the e-methane market, and this is the first step on that path, said Mika Wiljanen, CEO of Gasum Group.

“The e-methane produced by Nordic Ren-Gas is a competitive renewable fuel, which can be efficiently distributed through our existing infrastructure to our customers in the traffic, maritime and industry segments. Nordic Ren-Gas has an impressive pipeline of similar projects on the way – this is a strategically important partnership for us.”

Saara Kujala, CEO of Nordic Ren-Gas, commented: “We are extremely happy about this offtake agreement and partnership with Gasum, which enables the introduction of e-methane to the market very efficiently.

“Ren-Gas has been actively building a value chain for e-methane in Finland, for which this agreement is a concrete milestone. Ren-Gas has a development portfolio of several e-methane production projects, and this partnership enables us to accelerate the development of these important green transition projects.”

E-methane can be directly used in gas engines currently running on natural gas, biogas, LNG or LBG/Bio-LNG and it can be blended in at any ratio. There is no need for any additional investments in new equipment or modifications for companies who already own gas-run vehicles or ships, Gasum explained.

The company’s strategic goal is to bring 7 TWh of renewable gas yearly to market by 2027. Achieving this goal would mean a yearly cumulative carbon dioxide reduction of 1.8 million tons for Gasum’s customers.