Poland’s domestic gas resources are still barely tapped, and biomethane could end up supplying close to half of the country’s demand for the fuel. Estimates put the achievable output at 8 billion cubic metres a year, and the Senate has just thrown its weight behind an auction-based support scheme to unlock that potential.
The upper chamber approved an amendment to renewable energy legislation on Thursday. Its central element is an auction mechanism for installations producing biomethane with installed electrical capacity above 1 MW, with the President of the Energy Regulatory Office responsible for organising the tenders.
Under the new provisions, producers would be able to stack operational support on top of investment aid while remaining inside state aid rules, according to the Ministry of Climate and Environment. The bill also lays down rules for direct gas pipelines carrying biogas, agricultural biogas and biomethane, which the ministry argues would allow the fuels to be used well beyond the site where they are generated.
A sector far behind the rest of Europe
Poland’s production base remains tiny. Figures from the Energy Regulatory Office, cited a year ago by the Polish Economic Institute and covering the state of the market in March 2025, showed 416 installations operating nationwide — 415 biogas plants and just one biomethane facility.
The Energy Market Agency put the combined installed capacity of those units at 320 MW, with annual electricity generation of slightly under 1.6 TWh. That accounted for 0.94 percent of Poland’s total power production in 2024.
The distance to the rest of the continent is considerable. More than 20,000 biogas plants and roughly 1,600 biomethane plants are in operation across Europe, while the EU’s technical capacity to produce biomethane had already passed 6.4 billion cubic metres by the end of the first quarter of 2024 — a multiple of current Polish output.
Eight billion cubic metres on paper
The National Energy and Climate Plan takes a far more ambitious view, foreseeing eventual Polish production of up to 8 billion cubic metres of biomethane annually. With national demand for natural gas at 17.4 billion cubic metres, that volume would amount to roughly 46 percent of consumption and would open the door to a serious reduction in import dependence.
Gas for Climate goes further still. Its estimates suggest Poland’s long-term potential could reach about 13 billion cubic metres of biomethane by 2050, a figure that would place the country fifth in Europe for production capacity.
Source: WNP.PL, Photo: Shutterstock/noomcpk
