REPowerEU and the Biomethane Optimism: Towards New Dependencies?

This paper critically examines how the European Union’s ambitious biomethane scale-up target in the REPowerEU plan was established in 2022, despite various concerns and constraints. The plan’s goal to produce up to 35 billion cubic meters of biomethane per year by 2030 – double the previous Fit for 55 target of 17 billion cubic meters – has raised questions about its feasibility and potential socio-environmental impacts that conflict with the principles of a just transition. The plan is a clear response to reducing fragile dependence on other countries, such as Russia, and to decarbonizing the heating and transport sectors. Nevertheless, it deserves an in-depth investigation into how the energy crisis, industry ambitions, and societal scepticism about bioenergy in Europe were translated into such an ambitious target for biomethane – one that even prompted concern among some biogas and methane industry groups. How did the narratives that combine decarbonization and energy security override social and environmental concerns? This investigation can illuminate leverage points in the policymaking process to minimize energy injustices and exclusions that the policy may induce. By combining a discursive institutionalist approach the concept of socio-technical imaginaries, and the typology of power relations and dynamics, I analyze the ideas and discourses that shaped REPowerEU and related policies and mechanisms designed to boost biomethane production in the European Union member states. Through document analysis (e.g., EU Parliament debates, position papers) and qualitative stakeholder interviews with politicians, NGOs, and industry actors, I trace and examine the debates that shaped these instruments to identify key actors, their discourses, institutional context, and their influence on the policymaking process. Through this analysis, I will reveal (i) which/whose biomethane imaginaries dominate in the policy and how, and (ii) what forms of (in)dependence these imaginaries envision or overlook. The analysis will highlight what kinds of relationships between actors, including non-human actors, are envisaged by the policies and the institutional context that enabled the dominance of such imaginaries. Ultimately, the chapter will show how the biomethane scale-up in Europe may alter or reproduce existing configurations, including actor relationships and resource distributions, in the heating and transport sectors, which have operated within highly centralized systems of production and distribution. Theoretically, the findings will illuminate the conditions under which socio-technical imaginaries regain their legitimacy after a period of contestation, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of how imaginaries evolve over time in energy policy.