Sustainable Farms Need To Come Together, Not Cast Blame Over California Methane Program

I am a family farmer just like the author of a recent commentary critical of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, or LCFS. The difference is that my farm actively participates in the methane reduction program enlisted by the state Air Resources Board, through the production of renewable natural gas used to fuel trucks on California’s roads.

For our family farm, “sustainability” means doing more with less. Our dairy is the host of a hub-and-spoke model of methane digesters in Merced County, and all the dairies that send their gas to this hub are family farms. My wife, children and I are laser-focused on efficient operations, producing milk with less impact to our climate.

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Could a Landfill Power Your Home?

Across the United States, landfills are accumulating trash faster than materials can decompose. In the nearly 2,000 landfills in the US, food waste contributes over 50 percent of fugitive methane emissions from municipal solid waste landfills, those invisible plumes of potent greenhouse gas emissions that seep out of landfills and into the atmosphere.

Landfills rank as the third-largest human-generated source of methane emissions in the US, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). While diverting trash altogether would be the preferred outcome for pollution reduction, about 500 landfills across the country have turned to a novel way of combating pollution from the waste that is ending up in landfills: capturing the gas emitted from organic materials and transforming it into electricity.

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Waste Not, Want Not: How Methane Biogases Can Help Us Reach Our Climate Goals

The Biden administration is cracking down on methane emissions from oil and gas operations.  

Officially, they account for 28 percent of U.S. methane emissions, though a new study shows their methane leaks are even worse than we thought. But we also need deep cuts in emissions from other major methane sources, including agriculture (currently 34 percent of U.S. methane emissions and rising, as EPA’s latest greenhouse gas inventory notes) and landfills (16 percent of U.S. methane emissions, according to EPA, though new data indicates landfills emit 40 percent more methane than previously reported). 

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LoCI Controls Granted First-Ever Patent on Using Emissions Measurement to Optimize Landfill Gas Collection Operations

LoCI Controls announced the company has been granted the first-ever U.S. patent that covers the use of emissions measurement to optimize landfill gas collection systems.

The new patent, US 11,865,594 B2, includes technology to measure concentrations of greenhouse gases from landfills and uses these measurements to improve gas collection system operations and on-site action at landfills across the U.S. While the company's patent portfolio has continuously focused on unique and novel ways to employ real-time data to enhance the landfill gas collection process, this latest patent specifically leverages emissions concentration measurements from landfills.

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RNG News Updates From the Waste Industry

For decades, waste companies have generated electricity by collecting and processing landfill gas, turning regulatory requirements into an opportunity to spin a profit. But as North America’s energy policy has shifted, using landfill gas to generate pipeline-quality renewable natural gas has become a lucrative venture.

Today, all of the major public and private waste companies operating in the U.S. and Canada have announced or already completed RNG projects at their landfills. Those facilities join a rapidly growing sector that’s also producing RNG from food waste, dairy farm manure and wastewater treatment.

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BP’s Archaea Unveils Its Largest Modular RNG Plant in Kansas

US renewable natural gas (RNG) producer Archaea Energy, a BP company, has commissioned its largest-ever modular RNG plant next to a landfill in Shawnee, Kansas, BP America said on Tuesday.

The plant utilizes the company’s original Archaea Modular Design (AMD) and can convert 9,600 standard cubic feet of landfill gas per minute (scfm) into enough RNG to heat around 38,000 homes annually, according to the oil-and-gas major.

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Hexagon Bullish on CNG for Long-Haul Trucks

Though some OEMs have signaled that the end of the ICE age is nigh, reports of the combustion engine’s death as the backbone of the commercial-trucking industry are greatly exaggerated. Battery-electric vehicles are seeing continued growth in various medium-duty and last-mile delivery sectors, but their lack of energy density and cost per have prevented them from gaining market share for Class 6 and larger commercial vehicles in North America.

Several suppliers are anticipating that this trend will persist over the coming decades and are making major investments in the development of alternative fuel systems for diesel combustion engines. One such supplier is Hexagon Agility. Based in the northern suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina, Hexagon recently announced expansion plans of its Salisbury, North Carolina facility to field orders and installations of its compressed natural gas (CNG) fuel systems.

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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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