Technology Turning Food Waste into Renewable Energy: Bioenergy Devco

Food waste is an enormous environmental and economic crisis that demands urgent solutions. Each year, an astonishing 1.03 billion tons of food is wasted globally — enough to feed 1.26 billion hungry people. All that wasted food is responsible for a staggering 8% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

As the world grapples with these mounting challenges of food waste and the need for sustainable energy sources, an innovative solution is emerging — the use of anaerobic digestion (AD) to transform organic waste into renewable electricity. This cutting-edge technology offers a powerful way to address two pressing environmental issues simultaneously while also providing valuable byproducts that can benefit agriculture and local communities.

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EPA’s Fuel Standards Burden Biogas, Trade Group Tells D.C. Cir.

The Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas told the D.C. Circuit at oral argument on Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest renewable fuel standards conflict with Congress’s directive to promote renewable fuel in the transportation market.

The standards should act as “a market-forcing mechanism to incentivize the creation of renewable fuels and the environmental benefits that come with them,” Jonathan Ellis of McGuireWoods said on behalf of the coalition.

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RNG Coalition: RNG Breaks Motor Fuel Usage Records In 2023

The Transport Project (TTP) and Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas (RNG Coalition) today announced that 79% of all on-road fuel used in natural gas vehicles in calendar year 2023 was renewable natural gas (RNG), surpassing the previous year’s record-breaking level. 

Captured above ground from organic material in agricultural, wastewater, landfill, or food waste, RNG can produce carbon-negative results when fueling on-road vehicles like short- and long-haul trucks, transit buses, and refuse and recycling collection vehicles. California Air Resources Board data confirms that the annual average carbon intensity (CI) value of California’s bio-CNG vehicle fuel portfolio in its Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program for the first three quarters of 2023 was carbon negative and below zero at -118.85 gCO2e/MJ.

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TotalEnergies and Vanguard Renewables to Develop Renewable Natural Gas in the US

TotalEnergies and Vanguard Renewables have signed an agreement to create an equally owned joint venture to develop, build, and operate Farm Powered renewable natural gas (RNG) projects in the United States. The signing took place in New York on April 12, 2024 in the presence of Patrick Pouyanne, Chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies and Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock.

TotalEnergies and Vanguard Renewables will advance 10 RNG projects into construction over the next 12 months, with a total annual RNG capacity of 0.8 TWh (2.5 Bcf). The three initial projects in this agreement are currently under construction in Wisconsin and Virginia, each with a unit capacity of nearly 75 GWh (0.25 Bcf) of RNG per year.

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Clean Energy Fuels Announces First Injection of Renewable Natural Gas At Victory Farms Dairy

Clean Energy Fuels Corp. announced its latest renewable natural gas (RNG) facility at Victory Farms Dairy in Revillo, South Dakota, has successfully completed construction and is injecting pipeline quality RNG into the interstate natural gas infrastructure. The Victory Farms two-digester facility is utilizing the manure of 6,000 jerseys cows, which could process approximately 120,000 gallons of manure each day to produce an estimated 900,000 gallons of negative carbon-intensity RNG annually.

The ultra-clean RNG produced at the facility will find its way to Clean Energy's fueling network, helping commercial fleets reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions significantly and immediately. Clean Energy currently operates over 600 stations around North America, that provide fuel and services to customers including some of the largest logistics operators like UPS and Amazon, many transit agencies including those in New York City and Los Angeles, and dozens of waste companies including WM, Republic Services and Waste Connections. Developed in partnership with Dynamic Renewables and financed through one of Clean Energy's production joint ventures, the construction costs of the RNG facility, including the build of the manure collection facility, digestors and processing plant, totaled approximately $26 million.

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HZI: An Organic Waste Diversion Success Story

A sunny beachside town in California might seem like the last place you’d find one of the most advanced waste-to-resource facilities in the United States, but in San Luis Obispo, against the backdrop of this popular vacation spot, this is exactly what was built in 2018 by global waste-to-energy company Hitachi Zosen Inova.

Kompogas SLO is the name of the plant, a reference to HZI’s proprietary anaerobic digestion system that is at the core of the facility, which takes in the county’s organic waste and turns it into electricity that is fed into the local grid. The resulting compost and fertilizer go back onto the land, making it a closed-loop, circular economy initiative.

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Can Renewable Gas Technology Revolutionize Utility-Scale Energy Storage Solutions?

Germany-based startup Electrochaea is making strides in the field of renewable energies that may well revolutionize the way we store energy at utility-scales. The company has developed and is commercializing a disruptive technology that converts electric power into methane, which is the primary component of natural gas. Using carbon dioxide as the feedstock gas, power can be efficiently stored as renewable natural gas. The methane thus formed can either be used for power storage, as transportation fuels, or it can be transmitted via a natural gas network.

Founded by Mich Hein, a managing partner at Nidus, a St. Louis investment group specializing in renewable energy, Electrochaea’s solution covers three vital areas: utility-scale energy storage, grid balancing, and carbon reuse. Their innovative process converts low-cost and stranded electricity and carbon dioxide into pipeline-grade renewable gas. Named “power-to-gas”, this conversion process aims to optimize the role of natural gas in a sustainable and balanced energy sector.

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Vanguard Renewables and New England Natural Bakers Partner To Tackle Food Waste

New England Natural Bakers, a Greenfield, Massachusetts-based leader in organic granola, including their latest brand, Trunola, is proving that delicious treats can go hand-in-hand with environmental responsibility. This employee-owned company, with a long history of social and environmental commitment dating back to 1977, has been partnering with Vanguard Renewables to tackle food waste from its manufacturing process since 2020.

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Bioenergy Devco: Anaerobic Digestion a Smart Solution

Around the world, food waste is a leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, a major cause of climate change. In the United States alone, up to 40% of the food supply goes uneaten, equivalent to $444 billion in waste per year. Globally, over 1.3 billion tons of food gets wasted annually across the supply chain. Wasted food makes up the largest single category of material being landfilled or incinerated here in the U.S., making up 24% and 22% of municipal solid waste, respectively.

Landfilling this enormous amount of organic waste has a significant, deleterious environmental impact. Food waste decomposing in landfills generates methane, a greenhouse gas over 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term. Landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions in the U.S., releasing the equivalent of emissions from nearly 23.1 million gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year. The shocking reality is that approximately 30% of total greenhouse gas emissions come from food waste.

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