“Trash gas” – methane wafting from feedlots’ manure pits, municipal landfills, and similar dumps – is no longer trash. Companies that generate large volumes of the fumes are turning this “renewable natural gas” into a new source of revenue.
Smithfield Foods, the nation’s largest pork processor, is stretching covers across the four-acre manure lagoons at its Missouri plants and installing scrubbers to remove impurities from the methane. By summer, the company expects to sell enough purified gas to area utilities to power 10,000 homes.
Dominion Energy, a utility that supplies electricity and natural gas to customers in 16 states, is investing $500 million in the Smithfield venture. The two are working together on a similar project in hog-rich southeastern North Carolina, which “has the potential to be one of the leading renewable natural gas production regions,” Ryan Childress, Dominion’s director of natural gas development, told the Wall Street Journal.
Dominion will spend an additional $200 million to collect biogas from dairy farms in its service areas.
Dominion and its partners also are gathering methane from 26 Utah swine farms and flowing it into a pipeline that sends gas through western states to Bakersfield, CA. The farms’ off-gas will heat about 3,000 homes.
The Southern California Gas Company is working with dairy farmers to ensure that 20 percent of its gas supply will come from biogas by 2030. State regulators have given the company permission to charge customers more for biogas if they explicitly request it.
Chevron has committed $200 million to biogas development. Duke Energy says it has a five-year plan to become a market leader in the new resource.
When the gas market already is clogged with more methane in reserve than it can use, why add more?
Methane, the off-gas from biological waste, is a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. By diverting it into pipelines instead of releasing it into the air, companies can earn low-emissions and renewable fuels tax credits that can be cashed in or sold.
Pipeline companies, which have no conventional renewable fuels to turn into credits, are in the business of laying pipe and gathering gas from production sources. The companies can earn valuable credits by taking part in biogas projects.
The Pennsylvania-based UGI utility recently sold its share of a coal-fired power plant and invested in an Idaho project harvesting gas from dairy farms.
UGI has learned from its European utilities, CEO David Lindemuth explained in remarks at a December biogas conference quoted by the Journal.
“Utilities over there have found out how to remain relevant,” he said. “Keep that invested infrastructure, but also talk about how they can become a partner in reducing greenhouse gases.”
