Waste Not: Biogas and the Rural Blind Spot
When we picture the energy transition, we picture it from the city: rooftop solar, heat pumps, electric cars. Farms enter the picture mostly as a problem, through livestock emissions or competition for land. Biogas sits in that blind spot. It is rarely named among renewables, often associated with waste, and still a small share of European gas supply.
Piero Gattoni is a farmer and livestock breeder in the Po Valley, President of the Consorzio Italiano Biogas and, since 2025, President of the European Biogas Association. He argues the reverse of the dominant picture: farming sits at the core of the transition, because cutting emissions will not restore the carbon balance without the soil. We recorded this conversation in Brussels during European Biomethane Week.
We discuss:
- Why a dairy farm with tight margins turned to energy as a second market
- How digestate returns organic matter to the soil and replaces chemical fertiliser
- Why food, feed and energy can share the same land
- Where Italian biomethane goes today, and why it does not yet reach household heating
- Why the first farmers to invest had to organise together
- What long-term policy would mean for farmers and industry alike
A conversation about whose land, knowledge and trust the transition relies on, and who it still overlooks.
Energ'Ethic, with Marine Cornelis of Next Energy Consumer: the energy transition examined through the people it touches and the systems that govern it. If you are working on a related mandate or research question, you can reach her at contact@nextenergyconsumer.eu
Energ' Ethic goes out every other week.
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Music: I Need You Here - Kamarius
Edition: Podcast Media FactoryÂ
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