Aemetis Inc., a renewable natural gas (RNG) and renewable fuels company focused on below-zero-carbon intensity products, announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Aemetis Biogas LLC, connected its third anaerobic digester via pipeline to the company’s main RNG gas cleanup unit located at the Aemetis Advanced Fuels Keyes facility in Keyes, California. According to the company, Aemetis remains on track to complete an additional five digesters by the end of Q4 2022, with five more digesters under construction in the same timeframe.
“Connecting our growing network of dairy digesters will accelerate the pace of greenhouse gas reduction in California,” said Andy Foster, president of Aemetis Biogas. “Because dairy based RNG has a negative carbon intensity, capturing unmitigated methane from dairies such as Ahlem Jerseys accelerates our ability to provide negative-carbon transportation fuel to RNG customers in California to replace diesel in trucks and buses.
The Aemetis Central Dairy Digester project is designed to capture and convey conditioned biogas from more than 60 dairies to the company’s centralized gas cleanup facility which is operational at the Aemetis Advanced Fuels Keyes ethanol plant. The RNG is either delivered into the PG&E utility pipeline located onsite at the Aemetis ethanol plant, dispensed to trucks at the RNG fueling station being built at the Aemetis plant, or used as process energy in the Aemetis facility to replace petroleum-based natural gas.
The Ahlem Farms Jerseys dairy digester was funded in part by a US$1.4 million grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA). The US$12 million biogas cleanup facility was funded in part by a US$4.2 million grant from the California Energy Commission (CEC).
