Poland holds domestic gas resources that remain largely untapped, with biomethane production potential estimated at up to 8 billion cubic metres per year. The government has adopted a bill creating an auction-based support system, and the Senate has approved an amendment to renewable energy regulations.
The upper house of parliament accepted the renewable energy sources amendment on Thursday. Its key element is an auction mechanism for installations producing biomethane with installed electrical capacity above 1 MW.
The President of the Energy Regulatory Office will be responsible for organising the auctions. The Ministry of Climate and Environment said the new rules would also allow operational support to be combined with investment aid while respecting state aid principles.
New rules for dedicated gas pipelines
The bill sets out operating rules for direct gas pipelines used to transport biogas, agricultural biogas and biomethane. According to the ministry, this would enable wider use of these fuels beyond the site where they are produced.
Poland has substantial capacity to develop biogas and biomethane production but currently uses only a fraction of it. Data cited last year by the Polish Economic Institute, based on the Energy Regulatory Office and covering March 2025, showed 416 such facilities in the country: 415 biogas plants and just one biomethane plant.
Figures from the Energy Market Agency put the combined installed capacity of those installations at 320 MW, with annual electricity production of just under 1.6 TWh. That represented 0.94 per cent of Poland’s total electricity output in 2024.
A single biomethane plant against thousands in Europe
The scale of the sector’s development in Poland differs sharply from the rest of Europe. More than 20,000 biogas plants and around 1,600 biomethane plants operate on the continent.
The European Union’s technical biomethane production capacity exceeded 6.4 billion cubic metres by the end of the first quarter of 2024. That figure was a multiple of current Polish output.
The National Energy and Climate Plan points to a much larger potential. The document assumes Poland could ultimately produce as much as 8 billion cubic metres of biomethane per year. Realising that potential would cover around 46 per cent of Poland’s natural gas demand – 8 billion cubic metres against 17.4 billion cubic metres – meaning a significant reduction in dependence on imported gas.
The organisation Gas for Climate presents even higher projections. Its estimates put Poland’s long-term potential at around 13 billion cubic metres of biomethane in 2050, which would place the country fifth in Europe for production capacity.
Źródło: WNP.PL, Fot. Shutterstock/Ralf Geithe
