While preparing for our future business in the transport of green gases, such as, hydrogen and biogas, we are simultaneously keeping our attention focused on the present. After all, there are ways in which we can enhance our existing business that will have a positive impact in the here and now. Who better to report on this than those who are implementing sustainability in our company? On this page you will find examples of how our employees are reducing emissions and environmental encroachments.
Avoiding methane emissions
If work needs to be carried out on our pipelines, then for safety reasons, the gas must be removed from them. To prevent, as far as possible, this gas from escaping into the environment we use a combination of technical measures. As a result, emissions can often be reduced by more than 95 %. Furthermore, we deploy modern measuring devices to continuously monitor our pipeline infrastructure. This is because we can only efficiently reduce what can easily be quantified.
Minimally invasive tree root inspection
Trees with large roots can cause damage to our pipeline infrastructure and could, therefore, pose a risk to the health and safety of employees and people in the vicinity. In preventing such a risk, in order to avoid damaging the roots, we are trialling a non-invasive, above-ground method that allows us to check the location of the roots without having to expose them. In this way, we are able to significantly reduce the encroachment on the environment and the disruption to urban traffic.
Use of renewable energy sources
For several years now, we have been procuring electricity exclusively from renewable sources for our electrically powered compressor systems. Furthermore, in 2023, we increased the use of biogas - a sustainable alternative to fossil natural gas - in our gas-powered compressors from, initially, four to around eleven million kilowatt hours (kWh), thereby achieving a significant reduction in emissions. In 2024, we will purchase 15 million kWh of biogas and, in 2025, even as much as 30 million. Our biogas is produced from waste and residues, liquid manure, kitchen and canteen waste, straw and dry manure and, moreover, it fulfils the sustainability criteria under the EU‘s Renewable Energy Directive (2018/2001/EU RED II).
Feed-in of biogas into our grid
As an independent transmission operator (ITO), we exert no influence on either the origin of the gas in our pipelines or on the processes for its production. Basically, therefore, we also do not own the gas. Nevertheless, we do make a contribution and, to this end, we cooperate closely with the biogas plant operators in order, together with them, to seek out the best technical and economic solutions for integration into our grid. At present, we feed biogas into our grid from four feed-in plants. Three further plants are already under construction and six are in the explicit planning phase. For us, as a transmission system operator, the particular advantage is that no adjustments need to be made to the existing pipeline grid in order to transport biogas.
