Why Biogas Is Losing the Renewable Energy Race to Wind and Solar

Biogas has long been promoted as a renewable energy workhorse, capable of turning food waste, manure, sewage sludge and crop residues into usable fuel while simultaneously solving waste management problems. Yet new analysis published in the journal Engineering Environment suggests that the technology has fallen dramatically behind its renewable rivals, and that policymakers may need to fundamentally rethink where biogas fits in the clean energy transition. According to the study, wind and solar accounted for 96.6 percent of newly installed global renewable electricity capacity in 2024, while biogas captured a mere 0.5 percent of the market. The gap is not a temporary fluctuation but the result of deep structural forces that have made biogas increasingly uncompetitive in modern power markets.

The first of these forces is cost. Over the past decade, the levelized cost of electricity from wind and solar photovoltaics has plummeted by 70 to 90 percent, driven by mass manufacturing, learning curves, and relentless improvements in conversion efficiency. Bioenergy, by contrast, has seen almost no cost decline at all. This is not because the underlying microbiology of anaerobic digestion has stalled; the process, in which consortia of bacteria and archaea break down organic matter in oxygen-free digesters to yield methane-rich biogas, is mature and well understood. The problem is that the dominant cost components of a biogas plant behave very differently from those of a solar farm. Once a photovoltaic module is manufactured and installed, its fuel is free and delivered by the sun. A biogas digester, however, must be continuously fed, and that feedstock carries a recurring price tag.

This recurring feedstock cost is the second structural challenge, and it is arguably the more dangerous one. Feedstock availability is inherently finite and often contested. Energy crops such as maize silage, which have powered much of the biogas expansion in Europe, compete directly with food production for arable land. The analysis warns that ambitious biogas expansion targets risk turning into competition with agricultural land, raising food prices and undermining the environmental rationale of the technology itself. Even waste-based feedstocks, which avoid the land conflict, are limited in supply, geographically dispersed, and expensive to collect and transport. The logistics of hauling low-density organic material to centralized digesters can erode the economic and carbon benefits of the fuel they produce.

The consequences of these two challenges are already visible in the financing of biogas projects. Because biogas electricity cannot compete on price with solar or wind in open markets, most new projects are heavily dependent on government subsidies to remain viable. This dependence creates uncertainty for developers and investors, who must gamble on the continuity of policy support that can shift with political cycles. It also creates a burden for taxpayers, who effectively pay a premium per kilowatt-hour for biogas electricity that could be generated far more cheaply from renewable sources. The authors argue that the combination of high levelized costs, constrained feedstocks, and subsidy dependence has created genuine doubt about the future trajectory of the biogas sector if current strategies are maintained.

Does this mean biogas is doomed? The researchers are careful to say no, but their prescription involves a strategic retreat from one role and a bold advance in others. They argue that biogas projects should be reassessed not as a primary source of bulk electricity but as a niche solution in four specific domains: seasonal energy storage, grid balancing, waste management, and green chemistry. In each of these roles, biogas exploits attributes that wind and solar simply cannot offer, and the economic calculus changes fundamentally.

Consider seasonal storage first. Solar output peaks in summer and collapses in winter at high latitudes; wind is volatile on weekly timescales. Batteries excel at shifting energy across hours but remain prohibitively expensive for storing terawatt-hours across months. Biogas, and its purified form biomethane, is storable in existing gas infrastructure at scale, meaning energy captured from organic waste in autumn can be dispatched as electricity or heat during a dark, windless February week. Similarly, on a grid increasingly dominated by weather-dependent renewables, dispatchable biogas plants can ramp up and down to balance supply and demand, a flexibility service that commands growing value as penetration of intermittent generation rises.

The waste management case may be the most robust of all. Organic wastes, from municipal food scraps to livestock slurry, must be treated regardless of energy markets. Anaerobic digestion simultaneously stabilizes this material, captures methane that would otherwise escape to the atmosphere as a potent greenhouse gas, sanitizes the digestate through pathogen inactivation during digestion, and produces a nutrient-rich fertilizer that can substitute synthetic inputs. Recent reviews of anaerobic digestion residue recycling, including work on sustainable reuse of biogas digestate in China, highlight how the process can anchor circular economy systems rather than merely generate electricity. When the feedstock is a waste stream with a negative cost, meaning someone is willing to pay for its disposal, the feedstock limitation that cripples energy-crop biogas largely disappears.

The fourth niche, green chemistry, points to a more technologically ambitious future. Methane from biogas is a chemical feedstock as well as a fuel, and cutting-edge research is exploring how to convert it into higher-value products. One striking example cited in the discussion is recent work demonstrating methane oxidation to ethanol using a molecular junction photocatalyst, published in Nature, which hints at routes to liquid fuels and chemicals powered by light. If such conversion pathways mature, biogas could become a renewable carbon source for the chemical industry, a sector that cannot easily be decarbonized with electrons alone. In this framing, burning biogas for bulk power may be the least intelligent use of a versatile molecule.

The authors also stress that a case-by-case approach is essential to avoid the misallocation of scarce government subsidies. Not every biogas project delivers equal value: a plant burning dedicated energy crops to feed the grid may generate less climate and economic benefit per subsidized euro than a plant digesting food waste on the edge of a city, supplying winter heat and producing fertilizer. The policy lesson, drawn partly from comparative analyses of European biogas and biomethane policy and from financial assessments of integrating digestion with cattle farming, is that support schemes should reward the systemic services a project provides, such as waste treatment, grid flexibility, and nutrient recycling, rather than subsidizing raw kilowatt-hours indiscriminately. Without such targeting, the analysis warns, ambitious biogas programs risk becoming a financial burden on public budgets while crowding out cheaper decarbonization options.

The broader message of the study is a sober one for the bioenergy sector and an instructive one for energy policy in general. The renewable energy transition is not a single race with one finish line; different technologies occupy different economic and physical niches. Wind and solar have won the bulk-power contest decisively, and pretending otherwise wastes public money. But the same transition creates urgent needs for storage, flexibility, waste circularity, and renewable carbon that those technologies cannot meet. Biogas, deployed selectively and honestly assessed on its merits, may serve those needs better than any competitor. The dilemma, as the authors frame it, is not whether biogas belongs in the future energy system, but whether policymakers have the discipline to place it where it actually works.

Subject of Research: Economic and feedstock constraints on biogas expansion in renewable power markets and its strategic repositioning as a niche energy solution

Article Title: The biogas dilemma in today’s renewable power markets

Article References: The biogas dilemma in today’s renewable power markets. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-026-2292-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11783-026-2292-8

Keywords: biogas, renewable energy market, levelized cost of electricity, anaerobic digestion, feedstock availability, energy subsidies, seasonal energy storage, grid balancing, waste management, biomethane, green chemistry, renewable energy policy