Global RNG Upgrading Systems Market Outlook, 2031

RNG upgrading systems constitute the process layer that converts raw biogas—a mixture of methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, water vapour, siloxanes, and trace contaminants—into pipeline-quality biomethane or renewable natural gas suitable for grid injection, vehicle fuel, or industrial use. The regulatory perimeter around these systems has expanded decisively since 2024, and it now spans renewable-energy targets, sustainability certification, and gas-quality specifications. The European Union’s revised Renewable Energy Directive, RED III (EU) 2018/2001 as amended, establishes the sustainability and greenhouse-gas-saving criteria that biomethane must meet to count toward renewable-energy targets and to be eligible for support schemes, and it sets sector-specific targets for renewable fuels of non-biological origin in transport and industry. The REPowerEU Roadmap of May 2025 updated the actions to be taken on both biogas and its upgraded version, biomethane, and the European Commission’s Biomethane Action Plan aims at expanding production of biogas to a sustainable volume that can be upgraded into biomethane, promoting production from waste and residues. The EU’s Action Plan on Affordable Energy, COM(2025) 79 final, sets a target of at least 2.3 billion cubic metres of biomethane capacity from converted existing facilities and new plants by the end of June 2026, and the European Commission has indicated that a threefold increase in biomethane production would result if 90% of biogas were upgraded to biomethane rather than used for local electricity and heat. The EU currently produces 3 bcm of biomethane and 17 bcm of biogas, much of which is used for local electricity and heat but could be upgraded for grid injection, and rapidly transitioning this biogas supply to grid-quality biomethane can directly replace natural gas and deliver the greatest energy-system benefit. In the United States, the Renewable Fuel Standard’s Biogas Regulatory Reform Rule, finalised by the EPA in 2023, required the RNG industry to modify how all Renewable Identification Numbers are generated as of 1 January 2025, and RNG produced from landfill gas, wastewater treatment plants, or anaerobic digesters qualifies as a cellulosic biofuel generating D3 RINs, the highest-value category. The international standards architecture is anchored by ISO 20675:2018, which establishes terms, definitions, and a classification scheme for biogas production, conditioning, upgrading, and utilisation, and which has been adopted as EN ISO 20675 and DIN EN ISO 20675:2022-11.

Evonik’s SEPURAN Green hollow-fibre membranes, using a patented three-stage process, are positioned as the leading technology for biogas upgrading, with polyimide membranes dominating the biomethane space, and Evonik reported a 25% year-over-year increase in SEPURAN Green membrane module shipments for biogas upgrading. EnviTec Biogas has completed 106 EnviThan upgrading plants globally with a combined capacity of 44,000 Nm³/h of biomethane, and its latest 935 Nm³/h unit for Gasum in Denmark integrates the complete upgrading system, including Evonik SEPURAN Green G5X 11-inch membranes, into a single 45-foot container with the gas compressor housed in a soundproof enclosure. Xebec Adsorption, now operating as Ivys Adsorption, pioneered fast-cycle pressure swing adsorption for biogas upgrading more than fifteen years ago and has achieved methane recovery rates of up to 98.5% while operating at low pressure, with its kinetic PSA able to handle nitrogen levels up to 30% and recovery rates up to 99.8% in membrane-enhanced configurations. Malmberg supplies the COMPACT water scrubber, and its 2025 order for a 250 Nm³/h upgrading plant in Norrköping, Sweden, will process sewage-sludge-derived raw gas into biomethane for vehicle fuel. Hydron Energy has commercialised the Intensified Regenerative Upgrading Platform, branded INTRUPTor, which uses a biomimicry-based metal-organic framework to upgrade raw biogas into pipeline-quality RNG and claims up to 50% lower capital and operating costs and 80% lower greenhouse-gas emissions than other commercial products. These participants compete on methane recovery, methane slip, gas-quality compliance, containerised footprint, energy consumption, and the ability to handle variable feedstock compositions.

Market Dynamics

Market Drivers • RED III Targets, REPowerEU Roadmap, and the Biomethane Action Plan: The most powerful driver across the global RNG upgrading systems market is the codification of biomethane production targets and sustainability criteria at the EU level. RED III establishes the sustainability and greenhouse-gas-saving criteria that biomethane must meet to count toward renewable-energy targets, and it sets sector-specific targets that pull upgraded biomethane into transport and industrial decarbonisation. The REPowerEU Roadmap of May 2025 updated actions on both biogas and biomethane, and the Biomethane Action Plan focuses explicitly on upgrading biogas to biomethane and grid injection, requiring regional assessment of network development and matching it with biomethane production potential. The Action Plan on Affordable Energy’s target of at least 2.3 bcm of biomethane capacity by the end of June 2026, combined with the Commission’s estimate that upgrading 90% of biogas would triple biomethane production, converts upgrading capacity from an optional investment into a policy-mandated build-out.
• RFS D3 RINs and the US Renewable Fuel Standard: The US regulatory architecture provides a parallel and commercially powerful driver through the Renewable Fuel Standard. RNG produced from landfill gas, wastewater treatment plants, or anaerobic digesters qualifies as a cellulosic biofuel generating D3 RINs, the highest-value category, and landfill-derived RNG has been eligible for D3 RINs since the EPA’s 2014 pathway approval. The Biogas Regulatory Reform Rule, finalised in 2023, required the RNG industry to modify how all RINs are generated as of 1 January 2025, and while it phases out avoided-methane crediting for dairy and swine manure pathways by 2040 for CNG usage and through 2045 for RNG used to produce hydrogen, it preserves the core economic incentive for landfill and wastewater upgrading. D3 RINs have traded at approximately $33 per MMBtu, and pipeline RNG captures $30–$60 per MMBtu through gas sales and RIN credits, creating a revenue stack that supports upgrading capital expenditure. The EPA’s data shows total RIN generation under the RFS remained substantial in 2025, and the agency’s Landfill Gas Energy Benefits Calculator is used by project developers to quantify emissions reductions and support permitting and offtake negotiations.

Market Challenges • Feedstock Variability and the Limits of Single-Technology Upgrading: A persistent technical challenge in RNG upgrading arises from the variability of raw biogas composition across feedstocks and over time. Landfill gas contains siloxanes that exist only in biogas from landfills and water resource recovery facilities, and these compounds must be removed before upgrading to prevent damage to membranes, adsorbents, and combustion equipment. Wastewater treatment biogas varies with sludge quality and digester operation, while agricultural biogas from manure and organic waste varies with feedstock mix, season, and digester stability. Biogas upgrading has historically been a challenge because gas compositions constantly vary, flow rates fluctuate, and temperatures change with seasonal and weather conditions, and operators need technology solutions that are flexible, reliable, and cost-effective. No single upgrading technology is optimal across all feedstocks: water scrubbing achieves 80–99% methane purity with low energy requirements but requires large amounts of water, chemical scrubbing offers superior gas purity but is limited by high operational complexity and cost, and membrane and PSA systems have different tolerance envelopes for nitrogen, oxygen, and siloxanes.
• Methane Slip, Energy Penalty, and the Sustainability Accounting Problem: The environmental case for RNG depends on minimising methane slip and energy consumption during upgrading, and both are technology-dependent and difficult to guarantee contractually. Methane slip the fraction of methane lost in the off-gas or vent stream directly reduces the greenhouse-gas benefit of the entire value chain, and amine scrubbing is positioned as minimising methane slippage relative to alternatives, while water scrubbing can achieve methane loss below 2% but requires careful design. The energy required for solvent regeneration, adsorbent regeneration, and gas compression creates an operating-cost and emissions penalty that varies with technology and scale. A life-cycle assessment of four commonly adopted upgrading technologies pressure swing adsorption, membrane separation, chemical absorption, and water scrubbing found that upgrading is essential to enhance methane concentration but can be energy-intensive and susceptible to methane slippage, and the greenhouse-gas emissions of RNG production from brewery wastewater ranged from −21 to 32 g CO2-equivalent per MJ across scenarios.



Market Trends • Membrane Separation as the Leading Upgrading Technology: The market is shifting decisively toward membrane separation as the default upgrading technology for new biomethane projects. Membranes are now the leading technology for biogas upgrading, and polyimide membranes such as Evonik’s SEPURAN Green dominate the biomethane space. Evonik’s SEPURAN Green uses a patented three-stage process with highly selective hollow-fibre membranes, and the technology is positioned on operational efficiency and lower energy consumption relative to other upgrading technologies. EnviTec’s containerised EnviThan systems, built around SEPURAN Green membranes, have reached 106 installations globally with 44,000 Nm³/h of combined capacity, and the latest 935 Nm³/h unit for Gasum in Denmark integrates the entire upgrading system into a single 45-foot container with the compressor in a soundproof enclosure.
• Containerisation, Modularisation, and the Compression of Project Timelines: The market is witnessing a structural shift toward containerised and modular upgrading systems that compress engineering, fabrication, and commissioning timelines. EnviTec’s 45-foot container setup, first realised in 2025, enables high nominal capacity despite a compact footprint, and the compressor and container are pre-ordered and manufactured at EnviTec’s Saerbeck facility before shipment. Hydron Energy’s INTRUPTor platform is positioned on reducing capital and operating costs by up to 50% and delivering 80% lower greenhouse-gas emissions compared to other commercial products, using a novel biomimicry-based metal-organic framework rather than conventional membrane or PSA architectures. The containerisation trend responds to the distributed nature of biogas feedstocks landfills, wastewater plants, and farms are dispersed and small-to-medium in scale and to the financing constraints of project developers who need predictable capital costs and short construction schedules.

Segmentation Analysis

Membrane separation dominates the global market’s new-installation share because it offers the best combination of low energy consumption, modular containerised packaging, absence of chemical solvents, and commercial maturity at the scale that distributed biogas projects require. • The global RNG upgrading systems market is segmented by technology into membrane separation, water scrubbing, pressure swing adsorption, and chemical scrubbing. Membrane separation represents the dominant new-installation technology, and membranes are now the leading technology for biogas upgrading, with polyimide membranes such as Evonik’s SEPURAN Green dominating the biomethane space.
• Evonik’s SEPURAN Green hollow-fibre membranes use a patented three-stage process and are positioned on operational efficiency and lower energy consumption relative to other upgrading technologies, and EnviTec’s EnviThan systems built around these membranes have reached 106 installations globally with 44,000 Nm³/h of combined capacity.
• Water scrubbing remains a substantial installed-base technology, achieving 80–99% methane purity with low energy requirements because the process occurs between 6 and 10 bar and requires only gas compression and water circulation, but it requires large amounts of water and is less suited to containerised deployment.
• Pressure swing adsorption remains relevant where nitrogen and oxygen levels are high, and Xebec’s fast-cycle kinetic PSA can handle nitrogen levels up to 30% with recovery rates up to 98.5% at low pressure, while membrane-enhanced configurations achieve recovery rates up to 99.8%.
• Chemical scrubbing, typically amine-based, offers superior gas purity and minimises methane slippage, and pilot demonstrations using piperazine and methyldiethanolamine blends have validated the technology at industrial scale, but it is limited by high operational complexity and cost relative to membrane and PSA systems.
• The technology split is an application-matching outcome rather than a maturity hierarchy: membranes govern the distributed, containerised projects that dominate new build, while water scrubbing and PSA retain positions where feedstock composition or scale favours their specific performance envelope.

Landfill gas is the largest feedstock segment globally because the installed base of landfills is large, the gas volume is substantial, and the D3 RIN pathway provides the most commercially mature revenue stack for upgrading. • By feedstock, landfill gas represents the dominant share, encompassing municipal solid waste landfills that generate gas through anaerobic decomposition. Landfill gas contains siloxanes, which exist only in biogas from landfills and water resource recovery facilities and must be removed before upgrading to prevent damage to membranes and adsorbents.
• RNG produced from landfill gas qualifies as a cellulosic biofuel generating D3 RINs, and landfill-derived RNG has been eligible for D3 RINs since the EPA’s 2014 pathway approval, significantly boosting the economic case for upgrading landfill gas into pipeline-quality biomethane.
• Wastewater treatment biogas represents the second core feedstock segment, where anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge produces biogas that can be upgraded to biomethane for vehicle fuel or grid injection. Malmberg’s 2025 order for a 250 Nm³/h water-scrubbing plant in Norrköping processes sewage-sludge-derived raw gas into biomethane for vehicle fuel, and the Advanced Pretreatment and Anaerobic Digestion process achieved an overall carbon conversion efficiency of 83% and a 200% increase in RNG output compared to conventional anaerobic digestion.
• Agricultural and organic waste biogas represents a substantial and growing feedstock segment, where manure, crop residues, and organic waste are digested to produce biogas. EnviTec’s Hærup plant in Denmark is currently operated largely on slurry and produces 40 GWh of biogas annually with a maximum capacity of 70 GWh, and agricultural biogas upgrading is increasingly paired with catalytic deoxo technology to eliminate oxygen and meet stringent pipeline specifications.
• The dominance of landfill gas reflects the commercial maturity of the RIN pathway and the scale of the landfill installed base, while the growth of agricultural biogas reflects the expansion of anaerobic digestion capacity and the availability of manure and organic waste feedstocks.

Landfill operators are the largest end-user segment globally because they control the feedstock, own the gas rights, and capture the D3 RIN value that makes upgrading economically attractive. • By end user, landfill operators represent the dominant share, encompassing municipal solid waste landfill owners and operators that capture landfill gas and upgrade it to pipeline-quality RNG. The Scott County RNG facility, commissioned in October 2025, converts landfill gas into pipeline-quality RNG and will produce over 205,000 MMBtu of RNG annually, and the CMCMUA and Waga Energy project is expected to reduce up to 15,800 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions annually by displacing approximately 1.5 million gallons of fossil diesel.
• Wastewater treatment plants represent the second core end-user group, where anaerobic digestion of sludge produces biogas that can be upgraded and used as vehicle fuel or injected into the gas grid. Malmberg’s Norrköping project is a wastewater-treatment-plant deployment, and the APAD process has demonstrated a 200% increase in RNG output from sewage sludge.
• Agricultural biogas producers represent a specialised and growing end-user segment, where farms and agricultural cooperatives digest manure and organic waste to produce biogas. EnviTec’s Hærup plant, operated largely on slurry, illustrates the agricultural feedstock model, and Hydron Energy’s INTRUPTor platform is positioned for small-scale biogas-to-RNG commercialisation, addressing the distributed nature of agricultural feedstocks.
• The dominance of landfill operators reflects the commercial architecture of the RNG market: landfill gas offers the largest single feedstock volume, the D3 RIN pathway provides the highest-value revenue, and landfill operators have the balance-sheet capacity to finance upgrading capital expenditure.

Regional Analysis

Europe leads in policy-driven RNG upgrading deployment because RED III, the REPowerEU Roadmap, the Biomethane Action Plan, and the Action Plan on Affordable Energy create an enforceable biomethane target architecture, while North America leads in RIN-driven landfill gas upgrading, and Asia-Pacific grows with waste-to-energy and agricultural biogas expansion. • Europe is the most prescriptive market for RNG upgrading systems, with RED III establishing sustainability and greenhouse-gas-saving criteria, the REPowerEU Roadmap updating actions on biogas and biomethane, and the Action Plan on Affordable Energy targeting at least 2.3 bcm of biomethane capacity by mid-2026. Denmark’s biogas sector covered 40% of total gas consumption in 2025, and EnviTec has delivered 13 projects in Denmark with a combined capacity of 9,910 Nm³/h of biomethane, illustrating the scale of European deployment.
• North America is the most commercially mature market for landfill gas upgrading, with over 400 operational RNG projects nationwide and approximately 55 out of 283 privately owned landfills currently upgrading captured biogas into RNG, indicating substantial remaining headroom. The RFS D3 RIN pathway and state-level low-carbon fuel standards provide the revenue stack, and project examples include the Scott County RNG facility producing over 205,000 MMBtu annually and the CMCMUA and Waga Energy project reducing up to 15,800 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions per year.
• Asia-Pacific is a growth-driven market tied to waste-to-energy expansion, agricultural biogas development, and municipal wastewater investment. China, India, and Southeast Asia represent the largest volume opportunities, and Hydron Energy’s INTRUPTor platform and Xebec’s PSA systems are positioned for small-scale and distributed deployment where grid infrastructure and feedstock logistics are less developed than in Europe or North America.
• Latin America and the Middle East and Africa are project-driven markets concentrated in landfill gas capture, agricultural biogas, and industrial wastewater treatment, where upgrading systems are specified alongside waste-management and renewable-energy programmes and where multilateral development finance and international standards influence procurement.

Considered in this report
• Historic Year: 2020
• Base year: 2025
• Estimated year: 2026
• Forecast year: 2031

Aspects covered in this report
• RNG Upgrading Systems Market with its value and forecast along with its segments
• Various drivers and challenges
• Ongoing trends and developments
• Top profiled companies
• Strategic recommendations

By Technology
• Membrane Separation
• Water Scrubbing
• Pressure Swing Adsorption
• Chemical Scrubbing

By Feedstock
• Landfill Gas
• Wastewater Treatment Biogas
• Agricultural and Organic Waste Biogas

By End-User
• Landfill Operators
• Wastewater Treatment Plants
• Agricultural Biogas Producers