Chevron Corp. is accelerating its push to convert cow manure into renewable natural gas

Brightmark LLC, a global waste solutions company, and Chevron U.S.A. Inc. today announced the second expansion of their previously announced joint venture, Brightmark RNG Holdings LLC, to own projects across the United States to produce and market dairy biomethane, a renewable natural gas (RNG).

Brightmark RNG Holdings LLC’s subsidiaries currently own RNG projects in New York, Michigan, Florida, South Dakota and Arizona. Additional equity investments by each company in the joint venture will fund construction of infrastructure and commercial operation of 10 dairy biomethane projects, including new sites in Iowa and Wisconsin and additional sites in Michigan and South Dakota. Chevron will purchase RNG produced from these projects and market the volumes for use in vehicles operating on compressed natural gas (CNG).

“This latest expansion with Brightmark advances our strategy of higher returns and lower carbon,” said Andy Walz, president of Chevron’s Americas Fuels & Lubricants. “Opportunities like these not only reaffirm our commitment to investing in ways that are good for the environment, our consumers and our stockholders, they also bolster our previously announced objective to increase RNG volumes tenfold by 2025 over 2020 volumes.”

"Brightmark’s expanded partnership with Chevron is another positive step forward in the decarbonization of the farming industry,” said Bob Powell, founder and chief executive officer of Brightmark. “Our carbon-negative projects are successfully reimagining waste and delivering significant environmental benefits while improving economics for our dairy farm partners. We look forward to executing on these new RNG projects with Chevron and partnering with dairy farmers to expand our RNG footprint across the country.”

According to Bloomberg, the push comes as oil and gas producers face increasing pressure to show a roadmap to become more green. Renewable natural gas is produced from methane, the second-largest contributor to climate change. The technology for capturing methane from farms, landfills and other sites has been around for years, and is starting to gain traction as cities and businesses look for ways to curb emissions.

Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) or biomethane as it is also called, has been already demonstrated to allow carbon negative transportation, when used as bioCNG or bioLNG in fuel efficient, latest technology gas engines for trucks and buses.

Sources: CHEVRON, Bloomberg, GGM

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