By Maurice Smith, JWN.

Opus 12 and Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) have demonstrated a new process to convert the carbon dioxide in raw biogas to methane in a single electrochemical step, a critical improvement in the science of upgrading biogas to pipeline quality natural gas, and a simpler method of converting excess renewable electricity into storable natural gas.

The research is part of SoCalGas' development of technologies known as power-to-gas (P2G), a method of storing excess renewable energy. Because gases can be easily stored for long periods of time using existing infrastructure, power-to-gas technology has distinct advantages over storing renewable electricity in batteries.