Aemetis Inc., a renewable natural gas (RNG) and renewable fuels company focused on negative carbon intensity products, announced that its Aemetis Biogas subsidiary achieved a significant milestone by successfully completing testing of the $12 million dairy biogas-to-RNG upgrading and compression facility for the Aemetis Biogas Dairy Digester Project in California.  The biogas upgrading unit is co-located at the Aemetis Advanced Fuels Keyes ethanol plant near Modesto, California and adjacent to the utility natural gas pipeline.

“Completing the construction and successful testing of the biogas upgrading and compression facility is a significant milestone which will allow Aemetis to sell -426 carbon intensity RNG to fleet customers across California,” stated Eric McAfee, Chairman and CEO of Aemetis.  “In addition to our two operating dairy digesters and 16 miles of biogas pipeline, Aemetis continues to be on schedule to add five dairy digesters to our network this summer to meet increasing demand for lower cost, low emission, carbon negative RNG to replace petroleum diesel in trucks, buses and other heavy transport vehicles.”

The full system mechanical commissioning process for the biogas-to-RNG facility has been completed.  Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) is now conducting final tests of the utility gas pipeline interconnection unit that is already constructed, which will enable the injection of utility-grade renewable natural gas into the PG&E gas pipeline for delivery to customers.

Site development, engineering, permitting, construction and successful operational testing of the Aemetis biogas upgrading facility and the PG&E interconnection unit was achieved over a three-year period within the original project budget.

When fully built out, the planned 60+ dairies in the estimated $380 million Aemetis biogas project are expected to capture more than 1.6 million MMBtu of dairy methane and reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to an estimated 5 million metric tons of CO₂ each year, equal to removing the CO₂ emissions from more than 1 million cars per year.