The President vetoed the amendment with biomethane auctions. What next for the industry?

President Karol Nawrocki vetoed on 21 August 2025 an amendment to the Act on Renewable Energy Sources which combined two issues: an auction system for biomethane plants and a reduction of the minimum distance of wind turbines from buildings from 700 to 500 m. According to the justification, the reason for the veto was the change of distance for wind turbines, not the biogas provisions. For the biomethane industry, however, the effect is immediate: auctions, direct pipelines and other facilitations that had been worked on since 2024 fell together with the whole act.

What the vetoed act contained

Besides regulations on wind turbines, the amendment included support for biomethane plants in the form of auctions. According to the assumptions already described in early 2025, the auctions were to concern installations above 1 MW (the FIP premium covers only installations up to 1 MW), in capacity segments, with contracts for difference lasting up to 20 years, and the President of URE was to be the organiser. In addition, the government's April amendments extended the provisions on direct pipelines to biomethane, enabling gas deliveries directly to the end customer without a grid connection.

The industry considered this the most important missing element of the market. In Polish conditions, where connection queues and lack of capacity in the electricity grid block many biogas plants, biomethane injected into the gas grid or delivered by a direct pipeline is for investors a natural direction of development.

State of the market at the time of the veto

At the beginning of 2025 about 430 biogas plants with a total capacity of about 310 MW were operating in Poland, and biomethane was still not being injected into the grid on an industrial scale. The Polish Biomethane Organisation estimates the country's theoretical potential at up to 16 billion m³ of biomethane a year, of which realistically about 9 billion m³. The first installations intended for grid injection were under construction, and investors had for months been waiting for regulations on support for large projects. Many of them had already incurred expenses on administrative proceedings, connection conditions and land purchases.

Significance for the industry in Poland

The veto is a reminder of the legislative risk of combining unrelated topics in one act. In practice it delays the start of auctions by at least several months, and probably longer, because the provisions will have to be passed again, most likely in a separate act. At the same time it shows that biomethane has broad political support – the criticism concerned wind turbines, not biogas. For investors the lesson is as follows: project schedules should take into account the risk of regulatory change, and agreements with suppliers and off-takers – clauses on postponing deadlines.

What next

The coming weeks will show whether the government and parliament choose the fast track of a deputies' bill concerning only biomethane, or prepare a new government proposal. The industry will lobby for the biomethane thread to be separated from the contentious provisions, and for its other demands to be taken into account at the same time: a higher reference price, simplified environmental decisions for small installations at farms and a reserve of connection capacity for biogas.