California Bioenergy LLC (CalBio), a developer of dairy digesters for generating renewable electricity and vehicle fuel, Chevron U.S.A. Inc. and local dairy farmers say their joint venture, CalBioGas LLC, successfully achieved first renewable natural gas (RNG) production from dairy farms in Kern County, Calif.
The milestone underpins the partners’ commitment to provide affordable, reliable and ever-cleaner energy to California consumers.
“The project is the result of efforts of a remarkable range of stakeholders, including the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the California Energy Commission and the California Public Utility Commission,” says N. Ross Buckenham, CEO of CalBio. “These projects help create local jobs, improve local air quality by producing renewable natural gas for use in low-NOX emission fleets and reduce dairy methane emissions.”
Manure storage on dairy farms results in the release of methane, a greenhouse gas. CalBio brings technology and operational experience to help build digesters and methane capture projects to convert this methane to use as RNG. CalBio, dairy farmers and Chevron are providing funding for digester projects across three geographic clusters in Kern, Tulare and Kings counties. As they are completed, these projects will mitigate the dairies’ methane emissions and reduce greenhouse emissions from livestock.
The dairy biomethane projects are designed to send dairy biogas to a centralized processing facility where it will be upgraded to RNG and injected into local utility SoCalGas’ pipeline. The RNG is then marketed as an alternative fuel for heavy-duty trucks and buses.
With other recent Chevron announcements – such as the Adopt-a-Port initiative with Clean Energy Fuels – this milestone further demonstrates the company’s action areas to increase renewables in support of its business and invest in lower-carbon technologies.
Photo: California Bioenergy’s Projects web page
