Clean Energy Fuels opens South Dakota RNG facility

Newport Beach, California-based Clean Energy Fuels Corp. has opened a new renewable natural gas (RNG) production facility in Lake Norden, South Dakota. When at full capacity, the RNG facility at Drumgoon Dairy, a 6,500-cow dairy farm, is expected to supply 1.66 million gallons of negative carbon-intensity RNG annually to the transportation market.

Construction on the $38 million RNG digester project was completed in early December 2023, and injection into the RNG’s interstate natural gas pipeline system began within weeks. The RNG produced at Drumgoon will be available at Clean Energy’s network of fueling stations across the U.S. and Canada.

“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,” says Clay Corbus, senior vice president of renewables at Clean Energy, in a news release. “Adding a RNG digester that captures the methane produced by Drumgoon’s cows and turning it into a clean fuel is the ultimate recycling project.”

The RNG project was financed through Clean Energy’s joint venture with BP, developed with Dynamic Renewables, and is one of several RNG projects the three companies have partnered to build at dairies in the Midwest.

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Agriculture accounts for nearly 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the transportation sector accounts for another 28 percent, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Capturing methane from farm waste lowers these emissions.

Clean Energy Fuels has a mission to decarbonize transportation through the development and delivery of RNG, a sustainable fuel derived from organic waste.