NGVA Europe and Universidad Politecnica De Madrid (UPM) are partners of LIFE SMART Agromobility European project (link: https://lifesmartagromobility.eu/en/index/). NGVA and UPM were present in the “Workshop on carbon LCA of vehicles” organized by UNECE GRPE (Working party on Pollution and Energy) in Geneva on 31st of May 2022 (link: https://unece.org/transport/events/wp29grpe-workshop-carbon-lca-vehicles). This workshop aimed to assemble experts from and outside of GRPE to exchange information on the latest activities with respect to LCA/carbon footprint of vehicles to potentially include it as a priority topic for GRPE in the year(s) to come.

The speech, titled “Biomethane from liquid manure for the automotive industry”, demonstrated the feasibility of a new model of livestock waste management, through treatment and subsequent use, taking into account technical-economic and environmental aspects. The LIFE SMART Agromobility project uses anaerobic digestion to produce biogas and microalgae biotechnology for the upgrading process. The biomethane produced by this innovative process respects the principles of circular economy, and the LCA methodology adopted is in compliance of ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards.

The first pilot plant is under construction in Soria (Spain) and it will be active by the end of this year. The project is focusing on small-sized decentralized plants, able to process the manure produced by typical farms. In this case, the biomethane can power cars for more than 250.000km per year. However, larger scale plants or different models could be analysed in the future.

The complete workshop presentation is available at https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-06/8_NGVA_Eu_UPM.pdf.

You can see photos from the plant here.