SENER Advances Biomethane Regulation

SENER is creating a technical and regulatory framework, including a new Official Mexican Standard (NOM), to operationalize Mexico's biomethane market by establishing comprehensive supply chain traceability and strict grid injection protocols. This upcoming regulation addresses a critical institutional bottleneck by setting quality, measurement, and safety standards required to inject renewable gas into national distribution networks like SISTRANGAS. The framework directly impacts private project developers, network distributors, and industrial consumers by providing the bankability and contractual certainty needed to lock in financing and advance commercial-scale waste-to-energy operations.

SENER is actively developing a formal regulatory framework for Mexico's biomethane market, disclosed Enrique Contreras, Subdirector of Biofuels, SENER, during a panel at the VI National Biogas Technical Forum. The disclosure marks the first time a senior SENER official has outlined the specific instruments being developed, and the timeline for their completion, in a public forum.

"We already have the Biofuels Law, the regulation. We are working on a NOM on quality, and we are working on a biogas roadmap. The idea is to have full traceability of biomethane, to know from what raw material it was produced, how the production was carried out, the purification, the transport, the commercialization, and the distribution," Contreras stated.

The disclosure closes a gap that the sector has been signaling for years: the Biofuels Law and its October 2025 regulations established the legal architecture, but the technical standards required to operationalize biomethane commercialization, grid injection norms, quality specifications, and measurement protocols, had not yet been published. The NOM under development is the instrument that will fill that gap.

Traceability as the Regulatory Spine

Contreras identified traceability as the central concept that will allow SENER to regulate the sector effectively, requiring documentation of the origin and destination of each unit of biomethane. This will facilitate interinstitutional coordination with SEMARNAT for environmental impact assessments and with SADER in cases where agricultural or food resources are involved.

Julio César Regil, Director of Renewable Energies, SENER's Undersecretariat of Energy Planning, had previously elaborated on this point at the fifth national forum in 2025, stating that each unit of biomethane must carry certification: "We have the obligation to ensure, for example, that the biomethane generated in the State of Mexico came from a specific type of waste." That certification requirement, now confirmed as an active regulatory workstream, will create the accountability chain that lenders and industrial buyers require before committing to offtake agreements.

The traceability framework also carries direct implications for Mexico's emerging carbon and sustainability markets. Certified biomethane with documented feedstock origin can command a premium over fossil natural gas on the basis of its verified emissions reduction credentials, a commercial attribute that European buyers and multinational industrial customers with Scope 3 commitments will increasingly require.

The Technical Challenges: Chromatography, Filtration, and Injection Points

The panel at the CN Biogás forum surfaced the operational specificity that national-level regulation must resolve. Óscar Mendoza, Gas Director, Gasoductos y Estaciones del Norte, noted that unlike conventional natural gas, biogas demands complex filtration, regulation, and chromatography processes. Chromatography is indispensable for determining the calorific value and defining whether the gas can be injected into the network or whether it must instead be compressed for transport.

The chromatography requirement is not a bureaucratic formality; it is a physical necessity. Natural gas distribution networks operate within defined quality bands for calorific value, Wobbe index, and contaminant concentrations. Biomethane that does not meet those bands cannot be safely injected without risking damage to burners, meters, and industrial equipment downstream. The NOM under development at SENER must therefore establish the specific quality thresholds and measurement protocols that define whether a given biomethane production unit can connect to the SISTRANGAS or a local distribution network, and at what point in the system that connection is technically viable.

Rafael Mercado, Director of Liberalized Business, Naturgy México, highlighted that robust and precise measurement is the pillar that provides fiscal, operational, and financial certainty to the entire chain, allowing users to capitalize on the attributes of green gas. He noted that biomethane projects tend to be located far from urban centers and that network extremities carry very low consumption volumes, making district metering and intermediate pressure stations the ideal injection points, where greater gas blending provides operational flexibility.

Mercado also indicated that Naturgy is evaluating the possibility of assuming investments in short network extensions and interconnection points to reduce initial project costs and promote direct biomethane injection into the national distribution network. That commercial signal, from Mexico's largest private gas distributor, is significant: it suggests that at least one major network operator sees biomethane injection as a near-term business opportunity worth investing in ahead of full regulatory certainty.

The Legal Gap That Must Close First

Julio César López, Deputy Director of Regulation and Compliance, Igasamex, emphasized the urgency of harmonizing the technical and commercial criteria between biogas and natural gas, warning that existing contractual rules for natural gas must be adapted to biomethane and that Mexico's legal framework must evolve in step with the technology to avoid delaying permit issuance.

López noted that legal certainty is vital for mobilizing industry interest, and that project financing will likely be defined through commercial agreements on a case-by-case basis until the framework is complete. That observation identifies the practical consequence of the remaining regulatory gap: without a NOM establishing quality standards and without grid injection norms, project developers cannot close financing because lenders cannot model the operational and contractual risks.

The Biofuels Law Regulations published in October 2025 expanded the scope of the framework to include biogas, biomethane, and biojet fuel, and established that SENER has authority to grant permits for production, storage, transport, commercialization, distribution, and retail sale of biofuels. They also stipulate that SENER shall issue official standards and quality guidelines applicable to each stage of the chain, including specifications on purity, blending, and prohibitions against adulteration. The NOM Contreras described at the IMP forum is the specific instrument through which that regulatory obligation is being fulfilled.

From First Permit to National Market

The regulatory development is directly relevant to Brimex Energy, which holds Mexico's first commercial biomethane permit and operates a plant in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco processing approximately 900 tonnes of organic waste daily. Brimex obtained its commercialization permit in less than three months after the new legal framework came into effect, a signal of institutional receptivity, but grid injection at scale remains contingent on the quality norms and injection protocols that SENER is now formally developing.

CN Biogás President Guillermo Gómez, who has consistently identified the absence of tradable compliance instruments and grid injection norms as the sector's most binding structural constraints, had noted at the sixth national forum in May that CN Biogás expects at least ten emblematic projects to be submitted for permitting in 2026. The NOM timeline will determine whether those projects can reach financial close, and whether the sector's first wave of commercial-scale installations arrives in 2027 or slips into 2028.