Cathodic protection and network management: find out more

Written by Tommaso Russo, Product Manager Area of the AUTOMA Sales Division
From the intervention “A solution for the quantification and reduction of methane emissions”
SMART GRID DAYS 2025, 8 – 9 October 2025.

Monitoring and reducing emissions efficiently are an urgent necessity, not only from an environmental perspective but also from a regulatory one.

Regulation (EU) 2024/1787 marked a turning point for the energy sector. For the first time, the reduction of methane emissions becomes a structured obligation, with precise deadlines and requirements that affect the entire gas supply chain: transport, distribution, storage and regasification.

The regulatory framework, however, is developing in a complex context. The deadlines are tight, the requirements are increasing, and not all of the technical tools supporting the Regulation are fully available yet. Operators are thus faced with having to make operational and investment decisions in an evolving scenario, where regulatory uncertainty is compounded by the practical difficulties of effectively measuring, quantifying and reducing emissions.

It is precisely in this context that a key need emerges: to have solutions that allow us to move from theoretical estimates and sporadic campaigns to continuous and reliable control that can also be used for future compliance purposes.

From detection to emissions management: the limitations of traditional approaches

Today, the search for methane leaks is based mainly on LDAR campaigns carried out with OGI cameras and portable FID detectors. Fundamental tools, but which have structural limitations.

Firstly, the frequency of inspections is limited: the LDAR (Leak Detection and Repair) programme is carried out every three or even six months, and leaks could occur during these intervals. 

Another important limitation is human bias: the operator could make mistakes when detecting leaks or may not detect them all. Last but not least, the accessibility of components can also represent a problem: often stations have rather complex configurations and, therefore, components with high leakage rates may not be detected.

Even the quantification of emissions, often based on generic emission factors and inventories that are not always updated, returns an approximate picture, which tends to underestimate actual leaks. This approach may be less and less adequate in the light of new regulatory requirements, which require more representative and verifiable data.

In terms of reduction, available solutions often impose operational compromises: replacement of components with impacts on service continuity, reduction of operating pressure with the risk of not meeting network demand, or difficult or impossible interventions on inaccessible leaks. In the absence of zero-loss components, it becomes apparent that the problem cannot be addressed with a single approach.

MethanEye: monitor and quantify to make better decisions

MethanEye was created with a specific objective: to provide operators with a reliable tool for the continuous monitoring and quantification of methane emissions, transforming a regulatory obligation into an opportunity for control and optimisation.

The device integrates a CH₄ sensor capable of detecting concentrations in ppm and converting them into emissions expressed in kg/year, as required by regulatory requirements. Thanks to its compact design and installation in ATEX zone 0(methane and hydrogen), MethanEye can be placed directly near the source, intercepting even hard-to-reach leaks.

The flexible power supply — from the network, solar panel or battery — allows installations even in remote locations, ensuring almost continuous monitoring (sampling every 30 seconds) or configurable according to operational requirements and the required duration. The result is a constant flow of data, which reduces uncertainty and supports decisions based on real evidence, not on estimates.

MethanEye can easily integrate with existing PLC, G5P Automa and SCADA systems, or operate in stand-alone mode thanks to the integrated modem. This flexibility makes it suitable both for new installations and for the adaptation of existing systems.

Reducing emissions without compromising the network: GOLEM-ZERO

Measuring and quantifying is essential, but not enough. The reduction of emissions also involves a more intelligent management of operating conditions. GOLEM-ZERO was created precisely to meet this need.

It is a smart regulator capable of dynamically regulating network pressure based on real demand conditions, avoiding overpressure phenomena that contribute to increased leaks. Installable in Plug&Play mode, without the need to interrupt the service; the system is applicable to any regulator model and can be easily integrated into existing NTS offtakes and district governors thanks to custom-designed adapters. In addition, GOLEM-ZERO operates thanks to an integrated intelligence system, reducing the need for manual interventions.

Reducing overpressures without compromising service

The operating principle of GOLEM-ZERO is based on a flow rate band adjustment. The system divides the network’s operating range into different operating bands, each of which is associated with an optimised target pressure based on demand.

The bands are designed to partially overlap, so as to avoid continuous pressure fluctuations as the flow rate varies. The target pressure is changed only when the flow rate leaves the operating reference band, ensuring operational stability and continuity of service.

 
This logic allows GOLEM-ZERO to automatically adapt to different operating conditions — daily, weekly and seasonal — avoiding unnecessary overpressure phenomena. The benefits are also reflected in environmental terms: studies based on models developed by GERG (European Gas Research Group) show reductions in emissions of up to 12.5% in winter and up to 14.5% in summer.

A concrete answer to a real problem

The synergy between MethanEye and GOLEM-ZERO represents a concrete response to the challenges posed by EU Regulation 2024/1787. Not only does it enable methane emissions to be monitored, quantified and reduced, but it also provides operators with a tool to deal with an evolving regulatory environment with greater awareness, reducing operational risk and supporting future compliance.

Tommaso Russo

Product Manager at Automa S.r.l.

Tommaso Russo is a Junior Product Manager at AUTOMA S.R.L.. With a degree in Electronic Engineering, he explores new market opportunities and proposes solutions in collaboration with the R&D team. He is also actively involved in promoting AUTOMA’s technologies by delivering technical presentations to potential clients and participating in industry events both in Italy and abroad.

By Cristiano Fiameni, Technical Director of the Italian Gas Committee
From the speech ‘Methane emissions: the evolution of legislation’
SMART GRID DAYS 2025, 8 – 9 October 2025.

Methane emissions is a topic we cannot avoid addressing, since EU Regulation 2024/1787 on the reduction of methane emissions in the energy sector has been published. We will therefore see the guidelines along which the activity has developed during 2025 and the prospects we can glimpse in the application phase of this Regulation, which is particularly complex.

The operational challenges of the Methane Emissions Regulation

The Regulation was published in July 2024 and came into force on 4 August of the same year. It is important to emphasise this date, because a series of important deadlines originated from that moment.

This measure is particularity invasive. Indeed, it not only sets the objectives but  also maps out the path, leaving little room for the technical sector and causing difficulties from an operational point of view, as it has strong limitations on the modalities that inevitably clash with the practical needs of operators.

As already mentioned, the main objective of the introduction of the Regulation is to reduce emissions; to this end, they must be researched, found, quantified, verified and repaired. This applies to the entire gas chain: transport, distribution, storage and regasification.

On the one hand, covering the entire supply chain is positive. But on the other hand, as the latter is very diverse, the tools to be used should be adapted to each portion of the supply chain. In reality, however, the regulation is one-size-fits-all, and provides a single way of operating regardless of whether one has to work on a regasification plant or on an urban network spread over a city of millions of inhabitants. The requirements and methods of intervention are therefore the same, and this is the crux of the matter from which the critical issues in the application of Regulation 2024/1787 arise.

The fulfilments of the Regulation

Since the entry into force of the Methane Emissions measure, there are several obligations: some are the responsibility of the Member States, while others are the responsibility of the operators or the Commission.

With regard to Member States, several European countries have not yet completed the process of appointing the competent authority. Italy, on the other hand, has already submitted a draft law and made available official e-mails from the MASE (Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security) to which operators can refer for communications.

As mentioned, the operators involved also have certain obligations: in August 2025, for example, they had to submit the first leakage research report (LDAR) on the previous year, and they also had to quantify emissions, using generic emission factors. This meant that even more precise assessments could be made, but the minimum required was the use of literature values of emission factors applied to one’s assets.

The Ministry reported that most operators were able to fulfil this obligation. There will be problems in the coming months, however, because from February 2026 operators will have to submit another report using emission factors specific to their asset. This requires operators to perform an important activity of evaluating their assets, and how to relate this data to factors that have a realistic place in their system. This is not easy so there will be difficulties.

In 2027, however, operators will have to submit a report quantifying emissions from one’s assets and verifying the measures taken on the ground against the results in the atmosphere, i.e., reconciliation. This is a rather ambitious challenge for the sector, given that the Regulation presented the requirements without all the necessary tools being available yet.

The supporting technical standards

Another issue to be taken into account is the instruments, i.e. the technical standards supporting the measure. Indeed, the Regulation not only stipulates that there must be technical standards to support this activity, but also provides that these standards can be recognised by the European Commission as implementing instruments. The body that draws up the standards is the CEN (European Committee for Standardisation), in which several European countries, including Italy, participate.

However, there are critical aspects to this path. The first aspect is that a specific request from the Commission (standardisation request) is needed to draw up standards. This request was submitted in 2024 and it took some time to reach a conclusion. The latest news tells us that the technical phase of discussions between the Commission and CEN has been concluded, and that the contract will be signed shortly. Since the contract provides three years to draft the standards, we could have them by the end of 2028. Therefore, we are faced with an asymmetry: the stricter requirements apply from 2027 onwards, while the standards will perhaps come into force at the beginning of 2028. This represents the first problem.

The second problem is that the Regulation has taken on the honours and burdens of precisely determining technical requirements as well, and this has become an obstacle. Indeed, the Regulation requires the Commission to publish a delegated act specifying the MDLs (Minimum Detection Limits) for technologies and providing guidance on the limits for pre-localisation. The point is that these values have not yet been defined.

An initial stakeholder consultation document came out in 2025, which was supposed to be the basis for producing a subsequent one. The deadline was 5 August 2025, but it was not met. Therefore, we are faced with a doublecritical issue: the first is related to technical standards that are not available due to delays in the Commission’s issuing of the required documents; the second concerns the practical aspect related to operators. The latter, indeed, have obligations that they cannot postpone, and in order to fulfil these obligations they must carry out activities in the field that require investments in technology and equipment.

It must therefore be considered that there are also investments made ‘in the dark’, hoping that industrial best practices will be considered in this delegated act and that consequently these investments will be recognised as valid. Unfortunately, it is a time of great uncertainty.

The work carried out so far and the next steps expected

What have we done in the meantime? The CIG, through the experts made available by its members, participated in the activities and contributed by bringing the Italian position to the European tables.

At European level, it is worth noting the contribution of Marcogaz, the international non-profit association representing the European gas industry, which has produced guidelines for the application of the Regulation. These guidelines provide guidance on the main aspects and introduce two useful elements for operators. Firstly, they provide illustrative diagrams of the process to be followed in accordance with the Regulation. In addition, they include a chapter on the cost-benefit analysis of the activity carried out: the repair of the leak must not cause more environmental damage than the leak itself.

This initial document provides some general guidelines that allow us to assume that this concept will be included in the standardisation request that the Commission will submit to CEN. If this is the case, CEN will be able to develop a chapter dedicated to guidance for operators on cases where the effort is not worthwhile. Especially for those working in the distribution sector, having such indications is very important because the numbers involved are really significant.

Marcogaz in 2024 published guidelines on the Venting & Flaring part and commented in detail on the first consultation paper on the limits proposed by the Commission, which were considered unrealistic for some applications. Indeed, there are both established and modern technologies, but it must be ensured that there is no one way to operate: a neutral approach must be taken in order to achieve the desired result.

In view of the Commission’s request, the CEN decided not to publish the draft on MRV (Monitoring, Reporting, Verification), which started in 2022, but to use it as a technical basis for developing the ongoing standards. The European Technical Committee CEN/TC 234 is developing, in parallel, three standards to support the implementation of the Regulation:

• The first is on the quantification of leaks and associated reporting – MRV (Art. 12).
• The second is on LDAR (Leak Detection and Repair) (Art. 14).
• The third is on Venting & Flaring (Art. 15, Art. 16).

Thus, CEN has already prepared drafts which, in order to be developed and sent to public enquiry, require the two documents we mentioned in the previous paragraphs: the standardisation request and the delegated act.

Lastly, the CIG worked on the drafting of a national guideline that, in compliance with legal requirements, would lead to the practical application of the Regulation for the distribution sector, trying to ‘hold together’ the obligations of the provision with the prescriptions of ARERA (Italian Regulatory Authority for Energy, Networks and Environment).

The activity was completed in November 2025 and was preliminarily presented to the MASE.

The Italian Gas Committee, established in 1953, aims to improve safety and efficiency in the use of combustible gases. In 1960, it joined the UNI, the Italian national standardisation body, thus becoming the official Italian body for standardisation in the fuel gas sector.

As an association comprising institutional and non-institutional members, the IGC covers with its members the entire supply chain, from gas import to transport, distribution, storage, utilisation, equipment, devices and installations.

Cristiano Fiameni

Technical Director at the Italian Gas Committee

Within the Italian Gas Committee, a federated body of UNI specializing in the field of combustible gases, Eng. Cristiano Fiameni is responsible for technical standardization activities and the development of provided services, including training, seminars, and events.

Biogas upgrading to biomethane is a technological process that converts biogas produced from renewable sources, such as livestock manure or agricultural biomass, into biomethane, suitable for injection into the natural gas distribution network.

It is a complex purification process, which aims to increase the quality of biogas by removing impurities and CO₂ present in it. The resulting methane is then collected, compressed and called biomethane.

The biomethane generated through the upgrading process is chemically comparable to natural gas and can be injected into existing infrastructure and used in conjunction with other sources to meet energy demand.

At present, biogas production and its conversion into biomethane are still much lower than the injection capacity of the NTS offtakes.

Furthermore, this quantity varies depending on the circumstances characterising both the production and conversion processes.

Currently, the gas distribution manager is required to guarantee priority injection to the biomethane producer. Therefore, the system must always feed biomethane into the network when it has biomethane suitable for injection, which has priority over other natural gas plants connected to the same network.

However, there are different scenarios that can occur during the injection process. What can happen?

Possible scenarios during biomethane injection

When biogas is produced and the upgrading plant maintains a regular supply of biomethane in both quantity and quality, ideally there are no obstacles to the normal operation of the injection system.

But situations can also arise that lead to critical issues, such as:

• The pressure measured at the regulator inlet tends to increase progressively due to the increase in biomethane production in the upgrading system. In this case, the risk is that an overpressure phenomenon may occur.
• The flow rate of the upgrading system is higher than the maximum permissible flow rate of biomethane, meaning the producer injects more biomethane than contractually agreed with the gas distributor. This condition does not normally entail risks for the safety of the system but has economic consequences for the producer who incurs sanctions or penalties provided for in the contract for exceeding the emission limits.
• The biomethane coming from the upgrading system does not have sufficient pressure to exceed the network pressure, which in this case is high due to low demand or a backpressure condition. Even if production is regular, network pressure hinders injection, leading to possible system shutdown.
• The network pressure undergoes a temporary increase due to the decrease in consumption. Under these conditions, the network pressure could reach the regulator setpoint, thus causing the injection to block.
• The biomethane coming from the upgrading system does not meet the required quality parameters.There is therefore a problem at the systems/equipment level (safety alarms, prevention alarms, faults, power outages) which forces the plant to stop.

The AUTOMA solution to overcome critical scenarios

To avoid the problems associated with the critical scenarios we have just seen, at AUTOMA we have designed and built a system capable of

optimising the injection of biomethane into the natural gas network and guaranteeing priority injection to the producer, regardless of hourly fluctuations in production, flow rate, pressure and network demand.

This is the GOLEM-ZERO dynamic regulation system, which combines advanced electronics with an electromechanical actuator. GOLEM-ZERO moves the adjustment screw of a standard pneumatic pressure regulator, transforming it into an intelligent regulator.

GOLEM technology is based on a mechanically coupled servomechanism that interacts directly with the pressure regulator pilots, supported by an advanced electronic system. Thanks to the intelligence built into the system, GOLEM-ZERO can operate in autonomous mode and dynamically adjust based on actual boundary conditions, thus reducing the need for manual intervention on site.The system is applicable to any regulator model and can be easily integrated into existing NTS offtakes, thanks to custom-designed adapters.

Power can be supplied via the electricity network, but also via a photovoltaic system. In addition to the safety controls implemented at the logic level, during the development phase — both in the laboratory and in the field — mechanical and electromechanical safety systems were introduced to prevent issues caused by possible jamming of the pilot adjustment screw and, more generally, with the implemented control logics.

The system can be operated manually or remotely via any SCADA software or through WebPressure (a suite developed by AUTOMA specifically for the sector). It operates in fully automatic mode, dynamically adjusting the regulator set-point according to predefined control logics. The GOLEM-ZERO system communicates locally with the GOLIAH5P (G5P), i.e. an AUTOMA RTU, or with any PLC/RTU via Modbus protocol on RS485 port.

Thanks to GOLEM-ZERO, biomethane injection management takes place in real time, remotely and automatically. The system optimises day-to-day operational activities while ensuring a long-term success perspective for the plant.

In the presence of a demand for gas from the network, the downtime during which it is not possible to inject biomethane due to fluctuations on the production side is normally around 10 – 12% of the annual hours. Thanks to GOLEM-ZERO, these interruptions decrease by 70 – 80%, allowing for the injection of up to 6 – 8% more biomethane over the course of the year.

Furthermore, unplanned but necessary field balancing interventions to ensure injection priority decrease by up to 35%, which translates into lower operating costs.

AUTOMA designs and produces innovative, Made in Italy hardware and software solutions for remote monitoring and control in the Oil, Gas and Water sectors.

We were born in 1987 in Italy, and today over 50,000 AUTOMA devices are installed in more than 40 countries around the world.

Do you want to ensure a priority and uninterrupted biomethane injection into the network, with maximised uptime?

Contact our team without obligation and we will tell you what we can do to optimise infrastructure operations and control.

Barbara Diaz

Marketing Manager at Automa S.r.l.

As Marketing Manager, Barbara is responsible for defining and managing the strategic communication plan, with a particular focus on product promotion and positioning. She coordinates marketing activities and external collaborations, supports the launch and promotion of the company’s solutions through trade shows, events, and dedicated materials, ensuring consistency and impact of the messages in the market.