Aligning ambition, evidence, and delivery: insights from the ADBA National Conference 2025

Aligning ambition, evidence, and delivery: insights from the ADBA National Conference 2025

Held on 10 December at One Great George Street in London, ADBA’s National Conference 2025 brought together policymakers, industry leaders, investors, operators, and supply chain partners under the theme Biogas: delivering sustainable growth, energy security and a circular economy. Across a full day of plenaries, panels, breakout discussions and coffee breaks, delegates explored how to scale up the sector with confidence at a pivotal moment for the UK, centering on aligning ambition with the evidence base to underpin long-term policy and investment, and on what it will take to deliver sustainable sector growth in practice.

A timely national policy moment

With a clear sense of momentum, the conference opened with reflections from ADBA’s leadership on the evolving policy and market landscape, including growing attention on certification and market-based mechanisms as well as the importance of speaking with a unified voice as biogas and biomethane move further into the policy mainstream.

This momentum was crystallised by Lord Whitehead’s keynote address. Reaffirming his long-standing support for biogas,  his announcement of a two-year extension to the Green Gas Support Scheme commissioning deadline, alongside his comments on the need to secure long-term certainty through post-GGSS policy support and to prioritise exploring formal recognition of grid-injected biomethane within the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, underscored the relevance of the discussions taking place in the room with a tangible marker of progress.

Speakers highlighted increasing cross-party interest in the sector’s role in energy security, emissions reduction, and wider environmental outcomes, alongside the need for clearer, more durable frameworks to support long-term investment. Updates on market mechanisms, certification, and the treatment of biogas within the wider energy system underlined a shift in focus from short-term interventions towards the broader alignment required between the sector and government to realise the scale of ambition required in the years ahead.

Speakers also reflected on the importance of sustained engagement beyond the conference itself, with ADBA continuing to coordinate sector input into consultations, parliamentary engagement, and site-level discussions to ensure policy development maintains momentum whilst remaining grounded in delivery realities.

Grounding ambition in evidence

Alongside policy momentum, the conference placed strong emphasis on grounding ambition in robust evidence. Panels on market outlooks and greenhouse gas removals explored how biomethane can deliver emissions reductions at scale while remaining cost-effective and deployable within existing infrastructure. Speakers highlighted the proven nature of AD and biomethane upgrading technologies, capable of delivering low-carbon energy whilst also investigating the financial and environmental implications of meaningful carbon removals through combined carbon capture.

Importantly, carbon capture was consistently framed not as a competing objective, but as a reinforcement of the core energy case for AD. Discussions drew on recent analytical work across the sector, including evidence demonstrating that biomethane-linked removals sit among the lowest-cost options available, alongside analysis such as ADBA’s The World’s Cheapest Cleaner report, covering how capturing biogenic CO₂ from upgrading can strengthen system resilience, support industrial jobs and address residual emissions. Tools including the Anaerobic Digestion Certification Scheme (ACDS) were also presented as practical ways to support maximising site efficiency, performance, and overall economic viability.

The Nutrient Cycling 2.0 session discussed digestate’s growing role in the circular economy, underscoring the need for differentiated standards, stronger UK evidence on soil benefits, and proactive management of contaminants to support sector credibility as it scales up. This combined focus on evidence and delivery helped ensure that conversations around growth were matched by credibility and realism.

From ambition to delivery: demand and investment

Having experienced a morning strongly grounded in realising the legitimacy of the sector’s ambition, attention then turned to where both demand and investment potential for biogas and biomethane is emerging.

Perspectives from across the supply chain highlighted that interest is increasingly being driven by long-term decarbonisation strategies, with corporates and intermediaries viewing biomethane as a scalable, flexible solution rather than a niche fuel. Discussions covered a growing range of end uses, from grid injection and transport to SAF and data centres in the context of emerging AI, reinforcing the sector’s opportunity to build resilience through answering diversified demand.

Investment-focused panels explored what is needed to move beyond reliance on time-limited subsidies, emphasising bankable project design, infrastructure solutions such as shared grid injection models, and lessons from international markets. Together these conversations underscored that while capital is available, clarity, coordination and confidence remain crucial to unlocking it.

Identifying constraints to scale

A key outcome of the conference was the identification of under-prioritised constraints that threaten to limit growth. Panel discussions surfaced issues with the planning process and institutional capacity to support timely decision-making and project implementation. Breakout discussions covered a range of practical pressures, from the pace and consistency of mandatory food waste collections to considering infrastructure capacity and ensuring the optimisation and financial viability of new and old AD sites. The need to not lose sight of the potential for small, on-farm AD in future sector development and how we might achieve this was also platformed.

Skilled workforce capacity emerged as a critical issue, with speakers noting an ageing workforce, increasing competition for specialist skills from the more well publicised sectors of the energy transition, and a lack of clearly defined training and accreditation pathways. With shared discussion bringing these challenges into sharper focus, they were reinforced in Chris Huhne’s final closing reflections as areas requiring sustained future attention.

From alignment to action

The conference closed with a clear sense that the next phase of growth will depend as much on coordination and capability as ambition, with greater attention to skills, standards, and operational excellence alongside continued policy engagement. As discussions throughout the day demonstrated, aligning ambition with evidence and delivery is not a one-off exercise, but an ongoing process. Bringing the sector together in this way remains essential to maintaining momentum, addressing constraints early, and, as ADBA Chief Executive Charlotte Morton OBE noted in her closing remarks, ensuring the sector can “scale up rapidly, professionally and safely.”