Clean Energy Fuels has completed a $38 million renewable natural gas (RNG) production facility at Drumgoon Dairy, a 6,500-cow dairy farm in Lake Norden, South Dakota
The dairy farm is expected to supply 1.66 million gallons of negative carbon-intensity RNG annually to the transportation market at full capacity. While construction of the RNG digester project was completed in early December 2023, injection of the RNG into the interstate natural gas pipeline system began in early 2024.
The RNG produced at Drumgoon will be available at Clean Energy’s fueling infrastructure and will be virtually stored until all federal and state environmental credits are approved.
The RNG is expected to be assigned a carbon-intensity score in the first half of 2024.
The project, financed through Clean Energy’s joint venture with bp and developed with Dynamic Renewables, is one of several RNG projects the three companies have partnered to build at dairy farms in the Midwest.
For the first nine months of 2023, Clean Energy sales of RNG into the transportation market increased by 17% as compared to 2022 and, with customers such as UPS, Republic Services, LA Metro, Knight Swift, Amazon, and others, the demand of the ultra-clean fuel is expected to expand.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, capturing methane from farm waste lowers greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While agriculture accounts for nearly 10% of the U.S. GHG emissions, the transportation sector accounts for another 28%.
“Completion of the RNG project at Drumgoon Dairy, along with several others that are right behind it, is already making a contribution to controlling harmful greenhouse gas emissions,” said Clay Corbus, senior vice president of renewables at Clean Energy. “Adding an RNG digester that captures the methane produced by Drumgoon’s cows and turning it into a clean fuel is the ultimate recycling project.”
