Chevron, CalBio and California dairy farmers join forces to produce and market renewable natural gas

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Type of post: NEWS IN BRIEF.

Chevron U.S.A. Inc (subsidiary of Chevron Corporation) and California Bioenergy LLC (CalBio, company which designs, develops, operates and finances digester projects) have announced a joint investment in a holding company (CalBioGas LLC) with dairy farmers to produce and market biomethane as a vehicle fuel in California.
Press release: “CalBio & Dairy Farmers Partner with Chevron on Dairy Biomethane Fuel Projects”, 18/6/2019.

Figure 1. Stockdale dairy (taken from the website of the company). This CalBio project is a 600 kW facility located outside of Bakersfield. It was one of the first double-lined covered lagoon digester’s in California.

Chevron has signed an agreement to provide funding for as many as 18 digesters across three geographic clusters in Kern, Tulare and Kings counties (San Joaquin Valley, California). The clusters of digesters have been awarded California Department of Food and Agriculture grants, which must be augmented with additional capital to complete the projects. CalBio brings the technology, the operational experience and the capital to help dairy farmers build digesters and capture systems to convert the methane released on manure storage into renewable natural gas (RNG).

The projects are designed to send biogas to a centralized processing facility where it will be upgraded to RNG and injected into the local gas utility’s pipeline. The RNG is then marketed as an alternative fuel for heavy-duty trucks, buses and farm equipment.

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