Finland-headed Nordic energy company Gasum Oy has announced the winners of its GasumHackathon innovation competition held in January 2023 together with the BioEconomy Business Accelerator BioPaavo by JAMK University of Applied Sciences and growth company consultancy Kasvu Open. Each winner offered a different carbon storage solution at the final event.
An error occurred
On your profile you can see what subscriptions you have access to and more information.
Is some of the information wrong – please contact our customer service.
Please reload the page
Do you want to read the whole article?
- Six editions per year
- Full access to all digital content
- The E-magazine Bioenergy international
- And more ...
The purpose of the competition was to find a partner with near-commercial solutions and interest to take the lead in creating value from the biogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) produced as a side stream at Gasum’s biogas plants in Finland and Sweden.
Out of the five final entrants two winners have now been chosen.
Carbonaide Oy’s solution is to use biogenic CO2 in concrete manufacturing, enabling a combination of carbon use and storage, while in the Inherit Carbon Solutions’ mature concept, the CO2 will be permanently stored in geological storage.
The competition has been very exciting and interesting, and the level of the entrants and their solutions was very high. We decided on Carbonaide and Inherit Carbon Solutions as the winners because they had clear value propositions based on carbon reduction, potential fast implementation, and good pitches. However, because of the high quality of all participants, Gasum is willing to continue discussions with all participating teams, said Mikko Syrjänen, Director of Business Development at Gasum.
Further development and collaboration
The winning teams were very happy about the result and look forward to cooperating with Gasum to develop their respective solutions.
Both Finnish Carbonaide and Norwegian Inherit Carbon Solutions also saw possibilities in cooperating with one another.
The winners were chosen on April 19, 2023, at the hackathon day held in Espoo, Finland by a jury consisting of representatives from Gasum, JAMK University of Applied Sciences, and Kasvu Open.
The hackathon process has been very smooth: well organized and structured. We have also received new connections because of the good visibility of the process, said jury member Viljami Kinnunen, Senior Process Engineer at Gasum.
114 000 tonnes of biogenic CO2
Gasum currently operates a network of nine biogas plants and two biomethane (aka renewable natural gas – RNG) upgrading plants in Finland as well as seven biogas plants in Sweden.
In addition, Gasum is developing several biogas plant projects in the Nordic countries.
Gasum produces annually up to 114 000 tonnes of biogenic CO2 as a side stream of the biogas upgrading process, of which nearly one-third is in high concentration (>95 percent CO2).
Unlike CO2 from fossil fuels, biogenic CO2 from biogas plants originates from the decomposition of organic wastes and side streams and is not considered a greenhouse gas (GHG) emission.
The biogenic CO2 from biogas upgrading is today released into the atmosphere but capturing it could even further reduce the carbon footprint of biogas.
Investing strongly in biogas in the coming years is part of Gasum’s strategy to help customers move towards a carbon-neutral energy future.
Gasum’s goal is to bring 7 TWh of renewable gas yearly to market by 2027 for 1.8 million tonnes of CO2 emissions saving.
