Clean Energy Fuels recently completed its newest renewable natural gas (RNG) facility in Marshall County, Iowa. The Marshall Ridge Dairy project is expected to produce 1.7 million gallons of low carbon-intensity RNG annually, the company reported.
The three-digester facility located in State Center now is producing pipeline-quality RNG and injecting it into the national grid. RNG is a sustainable fuel derived from organic waste that provides an immediate carbon reduction in transportation.
“We value working with forward-thinking farmers, helping them create a new revenue stream from what would have been considered waste,” Clay Corbus, Clean Energy senior vice president for renewables, said in a news release. “RNG is an immediate, smart way to address harmful fugitive emissions, and the RNG produced at Marshall Ridge will directly help to cleanly fuel and decarbonize commercial transport.”
Financed through one of Clean Energy’s production joint ventures and developed by Dynamic Renewables, the project totaled $42 million, the company said. Methane from the approximately 240,000 gallons of manure produced by the 8,000-cow herd each day will be converted into biogas and ready-to-use clean fuel for heavy-duty fleets across the country. Clean Energy is in the process of filing the necessary applications to generate federal and state environmental credits.
Agriculture accounts for nearly 10% of U.S. GHG emissions and the transport sector accounts for another 28%, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Capturing methane from farm waste lowers these emissions. RNG, produced by that captured methane and used as a transportation fuel, “significantly” lowers GHG emissions on a lifecycle basis compared to diesel. This allows RNG to be one of the only fuels to receive a negative carbon-intensity score based on the reduction of emissions at the source and the vehicle.
“We have been in the business of milking cows for over 60 years, and that’s what our core business will always be,” Marshall Ridge Dairy’s Kevin Blood said. “Adding an RNG facility to our farm will enable us to manage our manure much better while generating an additional revenue stream for our bottom line.”