Outcry against LNG storage in the suburbs of Strasbourg

On the site of a former oil refinery, in the town of Reichstett (Bas-Rhin), industrialists want to install five horizontal tanks 54 meters long to store 5.500 m3 of LNG: gas cooled to -162°C, until it becomes liquid and thus takes up 600 times less space than in the gaseous state.

The future site, classified as Séveso high threshold, must be supplied with gas from abroad which, after crossing the Mediterranean, will be transported by trains from the Fos-sur-Mer LNG terminal to Alsace.

The LNG, mainly intended to serve as fuel for road hauliers, will be distributed by truck to service stations in the north-east of France, but also in Germany.

“Today, heavy transport players will prioritize their energy conversion (from diesel) towards an energy that works and is available, that is LNG”, assures Stéphane Simon, director at Rubis terminal, the group which pilots the project.

“And while the needs are growing, the Grand Est does not have an LNG hub: the area is supplied only by truck from Fos-sur-mer,” continues Mr. Simon. “The strategy is therefore to establish a local hub, to enable the supply of the territory, as part of the energy transition.”

But many voices contest the relevance of the project: although it emits a little less CO2 than diesel, LNG remains a polluting hydrocarbon, releasing greenhouse gases and contributing to global warming.

“Technology without a future”

“Why invest in technologies that have no future? It’s money misused,” protests Marie Chéron, of the NGO Transport and Environment. “The objective is to make the transition to electric, even for heavy goods vehicles. Investing in LNG is betting on a slow transition, it is not the right solution.”

The Environmental Authority considers that this project "cannot claim to participate in the energy transition", recalling that production, transport and consumption of LNG are "carbon solutions".

Reichstett and Vendenheim, the two local municipalities, and the metropolis of Strasbourg have issued negative opinions, fearing, among other things, a saturation of road traffic with the passage of tank trucks.

“That’s 60 additional trucks per day, in the immediate vicinity of a new housing development: who is going to want to live there?” grumbles Georges Schuler, mayor of Reischtett. “And if this project goes ahead, it’s a Séveso site, we will never have our authorization to do photovoltaics or methanization behind it.”

Promoting bioLNG

But for the project promoters, the use of gas as fuel is relevant compared to electricity, which requires long recharge times and low autonomy. This site should facilitate the use of bioLNG by transporters, a renewable energy made from the fermentation of organic materials (often agricultural waste), which is much less polluting than natural gas.

According to them, the use of bioLNG will be considerably encouraged by the integration, in the 2024 budget, of this fuel into the incentive tax relating to the use of renewable energy in transport (Tiruert): this tax, paid by distributors who do not incorporate sufficient renewable energy into their fuels, must encourage them to quickly replace imported natural gas with biogas produced in France.

“The economic incentive is very important, there will be considerable demand for bioLNG,” assures Laurent Hamou, head of institutional affairs at Elengy (a subsidiary of GRTgaz), project partner. According to him, the difficulty will be to produce enough bioLNG on farms, even though there is still no biogas liquefaction infrastructure in the Grand Est.

“It will take a few years, while the projects are put in place, there will not be much before 2026,” he concedes. But he hopes for “100% regional bioLNG” stored in Reichstett from 2030.

The project is still subject to prefectural authorization, which could be granted in the first half of 2024.