Prague has a new biogas station, it is supposed to help replace gas from Russia
photo: Zdeněk Strnad, as well as the photo in the text/From the press conference
Through Pražské služby, Prague bought a biogas station and a 35,000 m2 plot of land in Chrást u Poříčan. If everything goes well, it should be launched in January 2026 after the necessary modifications, Zdeněk Pajk, Waste Removal and Recycling Plant from Prague Services, told PrahaIN.
Metropole will thus be the first Czech city to have its own facility for processing bio-waste from households and restaurants. The produced biogas will be pumped directly into the gas network and will be used as a fuel for the trucks of municipal companies. “The production of biogas should cover three times the needs of all cars used by the Prague public transport services,” says Jana Plamínková, councilor for the environment, infrastructure and technical equipment.
According to our plans for the establishment, it accelerates the crisis, as well as the current events in Ukraine, due to which there are price increases and gas supply failures, on which the Czech Republic depends: “Many things that previously seemed unthinkable and which economically are now possible thanks that biomethane is currently cheaper than natural gas. Biogas stations will thus become one of the tools that can partially cover the failure of these supplies in the future,” adds Plamínková.
The first phase will be the conversion of the biogas station, which is currently used to process agricultural crops and agricultural waste, into a station that will process waste from households and restaurants. Its capacity will be 30,000 tons of waste per year. Furthermore, a completely new biogas station with a capacity of up to 50,000 tons per year is to be built on the adjacent land. The difference is also in the quality of the waste: if it contains purely vegetable waste, it is high-quality material, if there is also an animal component, it is considered pollution. whereas in housing estates or in the center these containers often contain animal matter, which cannot be processed in a composting plant,” says Jana Plamínková.
From the press conference. Photo: Zdeněk Strnad, PrahaIN.cz
“And at that moment it is the ideal material for a biogas station. It is also expected that waste from kitchens and restaurant operations will be processed. This will be cleaned into biomethane, which will be injected into the network and used as a substitute for natural gas. The by-product is digestate, which is used as a normal agricultural fertilizer,” adds Jana Plamínková, who is not worried that there will not be enough material (according to data from the Prague Public Service, about 11,000 tons of biowaste were collected from brown bins over the past 2 years, the biogas capacity is almost six-fold): “Since January 1, bio-bins are free and people buy them because it’s a way for them to save money – if they buy a bio-bin and know how to use it, then they have less requirements for municipal waste. It is gradually increasing and we are responding to this growing interest,” Jana Plamínková explains.
150 million crowns
And Zdeněk Pajk also confirms her words.
“The number of bins for bio-waste in Prague has grown to more than 30,000, and it is of very good quality – bio-waste is compostable. And as it gradually expands to residential development and apartment buildings, we expect that the waste will become more polluted. How it will develop is a question of demand from citizens. The second thing is gastro-waste, which is a commercial activity of the Prague Services and is not entirely related to the city – it has only a few operations under its management. There we are talking about units of thousands of tons from commercial activities. If the city takes the initiative to act on the citizens, or if the citizens are obliged to sort out the animal component, this figure will increase adequately.”
It paid 150 million crowns for the station and land. According to Zdenek Pajek, the costs of its modification will be exactly the same: “In the first stage, the gas purification and connection to the network will be modified, the costs are approximately 50 million crowns, and everything should be completed by the end of 2023. The second stage is the conversion to a municipal biogas station, where we will also be able to process animal remains.
There, the costs amount to 100 million crowns and it should be finished by the end of 2025. However, we calculated the prices 8-10 months ago, the question is where the market has moved during that time and what the reduction of deadlines will be,” adds Zdeněk Pajk. The construction of a new biogas plant with a capacity of up to 50,000 tons of biowaste per year will be significantly more expensive, according to Zdenek Pajek, it could reach up to hundreds of millions of crowns.