Vanguard Renewables points to decade of growth

Vanguard Renewables, a Boston-based organic waste and residuals diversion technology provider for the food and beverage industry, is celebrating a decade of “clean energy innovation and organic materials solutions.”

The company, which is a portfolio company of BlackRock Real Assets, has grown from two facilities under management in 2014 to 32 sites throughout the United States, with new projects commencing construction over the next four years.

Vanguard operates facilities in Texas, Idaho, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico and Vermont. This year alone, it will add sites in these states and begin construction on several facilities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas and Oklahoma.

Vanguard’s anaerobic digestion (AD) facilities convert food and beverage waste material and dairy manure into renewable natural gas (RNG). The process helps reduce on-farm greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and supports the decarbonization efforts of food and beverage manufacturers by diverting their byproducts from landfills or incineration to an energy-producing AD unit.

The company's vision is “to transform organic food and beverage materials into a force for good, decarbonizing the world, supporting regenerative agriculture and powering the lives of all those that live on our planet.”

“I am honored to continue to work alongside the company’s cofounders, John Hanselman and Kevin Chase, to build on the vision they launched a decade ago,” Vanguard Renewables CEO Neil H. Smith says.

“Our shared values have enabled the company to grow from 50 team members in 2021 to more than 200 across the country today, all with the singular goal to create another pathway to decarbonize our planet."

Vanguard has systems, many of them AD plants, currently operating in eight states, is constructing sites in four more states, has more than 10 projects slated for construction in 2024 and an additional 68 projects are in various stages of planning and development. Vanguard aims to have more than 100 completed projects by the end of 2028.

In addition to AD facility expansion, the company says it has expanded its food and beverage and organics diversion services to include “leading the way on RNG projects, providing a drop-in replacement fuel for fossil natural gas.”

Depackaging may prove to be another growth avenue. Vanguard's site in Agawam, Massachusetts, takes palletized food and beverage materials and depackages the food waste and separates the organic materials and packaging into two streams."

“By providing this service to food and beverage companies it has lowered the barrier to recycling organic waste in a cost-effective way, and it is also beneficial to the environment,” Vanguard says.

“When we launched Vanguard Renewables in 2014, I was researching why something that had been so successful in Europe had not been replicated in the U.S.,” adds Hanselman, who in addition to being a cofounder serves as chief strategy officer at Vanguard Renewables.

“Many companies had tried to build anaerobic digesters on farms across the U.S., but most had not understood how much of the entire supply chain operations and logistics had to be brought in-house.

“To be successful we realized that we had to build, own and operate the facilities so that we reduced the requirements on our farm host and simplified the food community’s adaptation of recycling organics. In this way, we accelerated the pace at which companies could participate in our circular solution.”

Vanguard Renewables launched the Farm Powered Strategic Alliance in 2020 along with Starbucks, Unilever and Dairy Farmers of America. It describes the alliance, which now has nearly 30 members, as a collaborative group focused on advancing sustainability, food waste reduction and recycling, expanding renewable energy production in the U.S., and supporting regenerative agriculture practices.

“The idea of developing a series of AD facilities across the nation and supporting our country’s dairy farms was something that I wanted to be a part of,” says Chase, who also serves as chief development officer.

“Our hard work and eye to the future made us the leaders in our industry. We stayed the course, continued to follow the science and innovations in engineering that have developed over the last decade, and believed in the mission to repurpose food and beverage materials and dairy cow manure into renewable energy and work toward a greener future for all.”

In 2023, Vanguard announced a "transformative" renewable energy partnership with pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca.

“To date, it is the largest open market RNG deal in the U.S.,” Vanguard says. The partnership will replace all of AstraZeneca’s fossil natural gas needs with Vanguard’s farm-derived RNG. Currently, Vanguard is providing RNG to an AstraZeneca facility in Newark, Delaware, with other sites coming online as projects are completed.