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Aemetis’ final biogas pipeline permit approved

Aemetis has received approval to build the next 21 miles of its $12 million (€10.2 million) biogas pipeline in California.

The company, which is focused on RNG and renewable fuels, received approval on its final permit to complete the Aemetis Biogas Phase 2 pipeline in Stanislaus County, which will connect dairy digesters to a central gas clean-up facility.

“Issuance of the Phase Two Pipeline county road encroachment permit is a very significant milestone for the Aemetis Biogas RNG project,” said Andy Foster, president of Aemetis Biogas.

“Having now cleared the two major permitting steps required to build the next 21 miles of biogas pipeline, we are poised to rapidly deploy the infrastructure necessary to connect our network of dairy digesters and accelerate the adoption of dairy biogas as a negative carbon intensity fuel to replace diesel in heavy trucks and buses.”

The ‘significant’ project milestone allows for the installation of biogas pipeline in Stanislaus County roads for construction of a pipeline that extends the existing four-mile pipeline by an additional 21 miles. The pipeline will convey conditioned biogas from dairies to the company’s centralised gas clean-up facility, which is currently under construction at the Aemetis Advanced Fuels Keyes ethanol plant.

At the Keyes facility, the biogas will be upgraded to negative carbon intensity RNG for use as a transport fuel in trucks and buses. The RNG will be either delivered into the PG&E utility pipeline located onsite at the Aemetis ethanol plant, dispensed to trucks at the RNG fuelling station being built at the Aemetis plant, or used as process energy in the Aemetis plant to replace petroleum-based natural gas.

Aemetis is completing the permitting process for 13 miles of additional biogas pipeline in Merced County to connect additional dairies to the Aemetis biogas clean-up facility at the Keyes plant. The initial four-mile Phase 1 pipeline project was completed and commissioned in Q3 2020, in conjunction with the completion of the firm’s first two dairy digesters.

Once complete, the biogas clean-up hub will produce more than 1 million MMBtu of RNG. Recently, Aemetis received a -426 carbon intensity score for gas from its first two digesters, which is currently being utilised as process energy at the ethanol plant. Additionally, the system will displace 6.88 million diesel gallon equivalents and eliminate 2,632,149 tonnes of CO2e per year.




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