Aemetis awarded $7.8M for phase 2 RNG dairy digester project

Aemetis Inc. announced today that its wholly owned subsidiary, Aemetis Biogas LLC, has been awarded $7.8 million in matching grants through the 2020 California Department of Food and Agriculture Dairy Digester Research and Development Program.  Aemetis Biogas was awarded approximately 50 percent of the total projects awarded in the 2020 DDRDP grant cycle.  The DDRDP provides financial assistance for the installation of dairy digesters in California, which will result in reduced greenhouse gas emissions through the production of renewable natural gas (RNG) for transportation fuel.  Aemetis was previously awarded $3.1 million through the 2018 DDRDP grant cycle, and successfully completed two digesters and four miles of private pipeline as phase one of its 18 dairy digester cluster.

“We’re grateful to the CDFA for their strong demonstration of confidence in our 18 dairy RNG dairy digester project,” said Eric McAfee, chairman and CEO of Aemetis. “After completing phase one of our project in just over one year, we’re poised to quickly accelerate the construction and operation of 16 additional digesters and 25 miles of private pipeline by mid-2022.  The combined project will annually displace approximately 6.9 million gallons of petroleum-based diesel fuel, eliminate approximately 2.6 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents, and create over 100 project related jobs in California’s Central Valley,” added McAfee.

In December 2020, Aemetis will begin construction of its biogas upgrading facility that will allow the company to inject RNG into PG&E’s natural gas pipeline by the end of the first quarter of 2021.  The company expects to offer truck fleet fueling of R-CNG at the Aemetis Advanced Fuels Keyes ethanol biorefinery in the second quarter of 2021.  For more information about the CDFA DDRDP, go to https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/oefi/ddrdp/ .