Background

As part of its strategic partnership with Evergaz SA, Meridiam acquired a co-controlling stake (28%) in Evergaz SA in 2018.

Evergaz SA provides biogas plant operation and management services and engineering services to biogas projects in Europe.

Evergaz SA is a shareholder in biogas projects in Western Europe: in France (directly or through BMP), in Germany and in Belgium (2 biogas cogeneration units). In 2020, Evergaz expanded its activities to Natural Gas Vehicle (NGV) charging stations. Please refer to the “Evergaz biogas asset companies” asset sheets.

Evergaz also owns a 34% stake in the C4 group, a company owning a portfolio of 10 brownfield biogas power plant in Germany, for a total production capacity of 23.8 MWe.

With the support of Meridiam, Evergaz is now an integrated developer, asset owner and operator of biogas facilities with a strong lead in France and a unique pan-European positioning.

Thanks to its integrated strategy, Evergaz can optimize value creation at every step of the biogas supply chain. It can rapidly adapt to new industry trends, build strong partnerships, and uniquely leverage knowledge sharing and economies of scale to develop new projects efficiently or seize acquisitions opportunities.

Stage:

In Operation

ESG/SDG key facts

Growing environmental awareness in terms of agricultural, industrial, and public practices, is making methanization particularly attractive because it is a proven technology. The methanization sector has a threefold advantage of:
• producing both biogas and green electricity (in case of cogeneration units),
• providing a treatment solution for waste by recovering organic materials from agriculture, industries, and
communities, and
• contributing to farmers revenues and cost reduction (by using digestates as fertilizers).

A comprehensive review of all externalities and impacts from our portfolio of methanization units was conducted in 2021 by Meridiam and Evergaz with the support of Enea and covers energy, socio-economic, climate and environmental impacts. It values the creation of new sources of revenues for the 628 farmers involved with Evergaz at €8.5m per year. The report also recognizes the positive impact of the project on the local communities, with more than 100 FTEs long-term jobs created locally, 531kt of recycled waste and 80kt of CO2 avoided annually.

As part of the due diligence review process at acquisition of each project, a technical advisor conducted an environmental assessment for all plants. No critical points were raised specifically regarding soil issues, air pollution (risk of release of ammoniac) or effluents leakage in soils.

SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being)

Solutions provided by Evergaz dramatically lower emissions.

SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation)

The share of water recycled for 2023 was 100%.

SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy)

Production capacity of green energy by Evergaz consists of 1.1 TWh of heat and 420 GWh of electricity (installed capacity of 53 Mwe), which is equivalent to the annual electric consumption of c.130,000 households.

SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth)

The whole headcount received training in Health & Safety during 2023. The Accident Frequency Rate (LTIFR) was 0 for 2023.

SDG 13 (Climate Action)

With its leading position in biogas-based solutions, Evergaz is a strong contributor to climate change mitigation. To further strengthen this score, it is monitoring the micro-leakage of methane in greater detail and developing a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.