Winery turns CO₂ into methane

A Spanish winery has shown that fermentation CO₂ needn't simply vent away — it can become fuel, thanks to a pilot project turning captured carbon dioxide into renewable methane using green hydrogen.

At Viñas del Vero in Aragón, researchers from CIRCE, Rovira i Virgili University and Gonzalez Byass ran the trial through the 2025 harvest as part of the EU-funded FUELPHORIA project. Over 300 hours, a two-stage methanation reactor converted 90% of the captured CO₂ into gas that was roughly 80% methane, with no catalyst degradation.

The team called it Europe's first integrated winery CO₂-to-methane system, built to cope with harvest's short, intense burst of gas rather than a steady year-round supply. Captured CO₂ is also being explored for inerting tanks and cutting water use — turning an unavoidable emission into a genuinely useful resource, and hinting at a promising option for wineries seeking to reduce their carbon footprint.