ABOUT RENEWABLE NATURAL GAS
Renewable Natural Gas (RNG), or biomethane as it is known outside of North America, is methane captured by the anaerobic decomposition of food waste, animal manure, wastewater processing, municipal solids waste, and other organics. The gas can be captured and cleaned in order to be interchangeable with conventional fossil-derived natural gas. This allows the billions of dollars of natural gas infrastructure already deployed around the world to be used to distribute a renewable, low carbon fuel.
There are now more than five hundred RNG facilities in North America and the market continues to grow. RNG generally requires incentives to compete with conventional natural gas and there are a wide range of national and state/provincial level programs in place to support RNG as a vehicle fuel or to decarbonize the gas grid in general.
Countries such as Denmark and Sweden currently use RNG for more than 10% of their gas use, while the USA has focused on displacing natural gas in CNG vehicles and now has more than 2/3 of CNG vehicles in the country use RNG.
RNG derived food from food waste and agricultural byproducts also creates a secondary benefit, by capturing and concentrating nutrients via the anaerobic digestion (AD) process used to create RNG. The byproduct, called digestate, can be applied at the agronomic levels required for crops, in order to displace conventional fertilizers that are carbon intensive to create and transport to farms.
About Dekany Consulting
Dekany Consulting is a small firm focused on providing technical, management and financial consulting services for the renewable energy sector, such as feasibility studies, technical assessments and financial analysis for developing and existing facilities.
Sean Mezei is the founder and President of Dekany Consulting and has helped develop, design, finance, or optimize over 100 biogas or landfill gas to renewable natural gas projects in the last 25 years with previous positions as Chief Operating Officer of EverGen, and President of Greenlane Biogas’s North American businesses.