RNG NEWS
Stay up to date with the latest stories, insights, and announcements.BP: 3 Policies the US Needs To Boost Renewable Natural Gas
Biogas can be a powerful tool to help ensure energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Captured from sources such as landfills, farms and wastewater treatment plants, it can be used for electricity generation, heat, and transportation fuel.
When cleaned of impurities such as nitrogen and carbon dioxide, it becomes renewable natural gas (RNG), which has all the same applications as traditional natural gas and can feed into the same national network of pipelines.
Dairy Manure Cuts Carbon Emissions
One of the world’s pharmaceutical giants is using dairy-cow manure and food waste to help reduce its reliance on natural gas as well as cut carbon emissions at the same time. United Kingdom drug company AstraZeneca is partnering with Vanguard Renewables, based in Massachusetts, to use biogas for heat and power by the end of 2026 in all its U.S.-based research and manufacturing facilities.
AstraZeneca began in June 2023 to purchase renewable natural gas produced by Vanguard Renewables for its Newark Campus in Delaware, where the company packages 26 medicines for distribution across the United States and makes medicine formulations for global supply. By 2026 the collaboration will enable as much as 650,000 million British thermal units or 190,500 megawatt hours per year of renewable natural gas to be used across AstraZeneca’s U.S. sites. That’s equivalent to the energy required to heat more than 17,800 homes for one year across the United States.
Exclusive: Q&A With Vanguard Renewables’ Brian Tracey
Vanguard Renewables was founded in 2014 and is the largest developer, owner and operator of anaerobic digesters in the US. We work with manure-only and co-digestion (manure, food and beverage waste) systems, which we continue to develop across the US.
The past few years have been instrumental for the company’s growth, as we were acquired by funds managed by BlackRock in 2022, and in 2023, we announced the largest US voluntary RNG offtake agreement with AstraZeneca.
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.
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.
Integrated RNG: Nopetro Energy on Creating a Circular Economic Model
Florida-headquartered Nopetro Energy is adding another cog to its “circular” clean energy operations as it captures methane from municipal landfill waste to create renewable natural gas (RNG). The gas is then turned into CNG to fuel public transit and fleets.
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).
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.
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.
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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