The Union of Producers and Employers of the Biogas and Biomethane Industry (UPEBBI) was established in 2012. We are an employers’s association acting pursuant to the Employers’s Organisations Act and enjoy all the benefits associated with this special status. We bring together companies that primarily operate, design, build and service biogas and biomethane plants, as well as those in the business environment (dealing with, for example, energy trading, EU subsidies or plant insurance).
The UPEBBI’s motto is ‘TOGETHER FOR BIOGAS’. This is why we are making a concerted effort to ensure that the agricultural, wastewater and waste biogas and biomethane industry operates in an environment more and more conducive to its development. Our aim is to work together for the benefit of the biogas and biomethane industry in Poland, in Europe and worldwide (as a participant in the European Biogas Association, the World Biogas Association and the Biomethane Industrial Partnership). Within the framework of the EU’s Erasmus+ programme, we undertake international cooperation, e.g. with similar organisations from the Czech Republic and Latvia on the project ‘Personnel training for the European biogas sector’.
The UPEBBI’s overarching objectives are to provide comprehensive assistance and legal protection to its members and to form a unified position on all matters relating to their business. We are the largest industry organisation participating in the Covenant for Biogas and Biomethane, which brings together seven players representing the majority of the sector. We work on an ongoing basis with lawyers, experts, academics, officials and industry practitioners to optimise the outcomes of our efforts. We collaborate with scientific and research institutions (universities, academies and state research institutes) to develop innovative technological solutions that contribute to a more dynamic development of the industry in Poland and worldwide.
Together with the University of Life Sciences in Lublin and the Institute of Agricultural and Food Biotechnology, as well as the Agricultural Training Centres, we are setting up Sector Skills Centres in the field of bioenergetics (in the Lublin and Pomerania regions) for the training of students, teachers and adults. We carry out educational and promotional activities to raise the public’s awareness of the possibilities of producing and using biogas as a renewable energy source and biomethane as a gaseous fuel, e.g. by conducting workshops for hundreds of people nationwide (potential investors, employees of local government units and students of agricultural schools) on behalf of the National Agricultural Support Centre or by training employees of the Provincial Environmental Protection and Water Management Fund in Białystok.
We have successfully intervened on many occasions at the stage of drafting laws and regulations relating to the biogas industry. We maintain a working relationship with the Ministry of Climate and Environment (renewable energy and waste management divisions) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (rural energy transition division), as well as the National Environmental Protection and Water Management Fund and the Environmental Protection Institute. We regularly participate in legislative and consultative work at the level of the Polish parliament, attending committee and team meetings and talking to members of the parliaments who are particularly interested.
We participate in public consultations and provide information on biogas and biomethane to all those interested in these topics.
We promote the biogas technology in conventional and social media as well as at various events, conferences and fairs related to renewable energy sources (e.g. the Economic Forum in Karpacz, the European Economic Congress in Katowice, the Distributed Energy Congress in Krakow, the Poznań Economic Congress in Poznań, the Ekoforum in Supraśl and Zamość, the EuroPower and OZEPower in Warsaw and the Central Agricultural Fair at the Ptak Warsaw Expo). We organise Green Gas Poland [https://greengaspoland.pl/], an annual international conference for the biogas and biomethane industry, which over its six editions has attracted hundreds of participants: representatives of private companies and the State Treasury, government bodies and agencies, energy and biogas media as well as scientists, investors, farmers and local governments.
