Aemetis Inc. and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) on June 10 held a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the commissioning of Aemetis’s renewable natural gas (RNG) cleanup and compression unit and interconnection with PG&E’s gas pipeline for the Aemetis Biogas Central Dairy Digester Project.

The Aemetis biogas cleanup unit is collocated at the company’s corn ethanol plant in Keyes, California, and is directly connected to the PG&E natural gas pipeline. Aemetis said RNG system testing is complete, including testing of the PG&E interconnection unit.

When fully built out, more than 60 dairies are expected to be connected to the Aemetis biogas project, capturing more than 1.6 million MMBtu of dairy methane annually. The partnership between Aemetis and PG&E will transport the resulting RNG to end-use customers in California.

“Commissioning the biogas cleanup unit and interconnecting with PG&E’s gas pipeline is a significant milestone for Aemetis,” said Eric McAfee, chairman and CEO of Aemetis. “Our ability to fuel trucks with negative carbon intensity RNG will contribute to California’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2045 and will reduce transportation air pollution created by diesel emissions.”

“We are proud to partner with Aemetis and California dairies to deliver clean renewable natural gas to Californians,” said Janisse Quiñones, senior vice president, gas engineering, PG&E. “This project is a key milestone in our goal to expand our renewable energy mix within our gas supply and evolve our system to be a safe, affordable, and reliable net zero energy delivery platform.”

Aemetis on June 9 announced that its wholly owned subsidiary Aemetis Biogas LLC had connected its third anaerobic digester via pipeline to the RNG gas cleanup unit. The company expected to complete five more dairy digesters and 40 miles of pressurized biogas pipeline before the end of the year. In addition, construction is scheduled to begin on five additional dairy digesters this summer.