Calgren Dairy Fuels, Southern California Gas Co. announce expansion of California dairy renewable natural gas facility
-January 15,2020-
Calgren Dairy Fuels, based in Tulare County and Southern California Gas Co. announced Monday that four additional dairy farms began providing methane produced by cow manure to Calgren’s biogas facility in Pixley, California to SoCalGas’ system.
“Over the last five years, renewable natural gas use in the transportation sector has grown by almost 600 percent,” Sharon Tomkins, SoCalGas vice president and chief environmental officer, said. “We’re looking to build on that success by delivering more renewable energy options to our customers, including renewable natural gas produced at farms, hydrogen made from surplus solar energy, and advanced fuel cell systems that can provide energy in extreme weather events. Each of these technologies will be essential to promoting the long-term reliability of our energy systems and to meeting California’s ambitious climate goals affordably.”
Calgren’s biogas operation in Pixley now collects methane from more than 66,000 cows at 10 dairy farms. The additional dairies are expected almost to double the amount of RNG produced at the facility.
“Calgren is leading efforts in California on this front, working with both dairies and SoCalGas to mitigate emissions,” Lyle Schlyer, president of Calgren Renewable Fuels, said. “This facility alone will eventually capture methane produced from the manure of more than 75,000 cows, preventing about 130,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of taking more than 25,000 passenger cars off the road annually.”
East of Hwy 99?
Schlyer says the company is considering a plan to expand their network even more to the east side of Highway 99 where more dairies could hook up to the system, extending the pipeline under the highway.Currently all dairies are located west of 99.
Calgren partnered with Maas Energy Works to develop the four new dairy digesters and the previous six dairy digesters, which have been in operation since 2018.