Aemetis Inc., a renewable natural gas and renewable fuels company focused on negative carbon intensity products, and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) have reached a milestone with the commissioning of the company’s dairy renewable natural gas (RNG) cleanup and compression unit and interconnection with PG&E’s gas pipeline for the Aemetis Biogas Central Dairy Digester Project. The Aemetis RNG system testing has been completed, including testing of the PG&E interconnection unit, which will enable the production and delivery of utility-grade RNG for sale as transportation fuel to California customers via pipeline delivery.
When fully built out, the planned 60+ dairies in the Aemetis biogas project are expected to capture more than 1.6 million MMBtu of dairy methane annually. The Aemetis biogas cleanup unit is co-located at the Aemetis Advanced Fuels ethanol plant and is directly connected to the PG&E natural gas pipeline.
“We are proud to partner with Aemetis and California dairies to deliver clean renewable natural gas to Californians,” says Janisse Quiñones, PG&E’s senior vice president of gas engineering. “This project is a key milestone in our goal to expand our renewable energy mix within our gas supply and evolve our system to be a safe, affordable, and reliable net zero energy delivery platform.”
“Commissioning the biogas cleanup unit and interconnecting with PG&E’s gas pipeline is a significant milestone for Aemetis,” comments Eric McAfee, chairman and CEO of Aemetis. “Our ability to fuel trucks with negative carbon intensity RNG will contribute to California’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2045 and will reduce transportation air pollution created by diesel emissions.”
In addition to three operating dairy digesters, the Aemetis Biogas Central Dairy Project is scheduled to complete five more dairy digesters in Q4 2022, begin construction of five additional dairy digesters later this summer, and complete 40 miles of pressurized biogas pipeline by the end of Q4 2022.
