As part of its commitment to serve 15% of its residential and commercial demand with California-produced renewable natural gas by 2030, Pacific Gas & Electric Company is exploring biomass-to-RNG production that uses wood waste from its own system, while expanding other California RNG resources.
Each year, PG&E prunes or removes dead, diseased or dying trees from areas near its power lines. Now, this important fire-prevention program may play a role in the company’s decarbonization effort.
PG&E’s Vegetation Management team will supply wood waste from nearby projects. An independent California company, West Biofuels, will test advanced technology to convert the wood waste into pipeline-ready RNG.
PG&E expects the three-year test to produce 3,000 MMBtu per month of RNG starting in 2025.
“A clean and decarbonized energy future requires bold steps and breakthrough technologies,” Jason Glickman, PG&E’s engineering, policy and strategy executive vice president, told American Gas. “We’re excited and eager to partner with other change-makers in Northern California to expand and scale the production of clean, renewable natural gas from the abundant wood waste available within our state.”
The biomass project joins other ongoing projects by the utility. For example, PG&E is starting a second round of procurement bids to expand its RNG supplied to customers, inviting projects that can produce RNG from organic waste, wastewater, livestock waste and wood waste. The utility is also continuing to develop its gas pipeline system to accommodate RNG and plans to interconnect both landfill and food waste RNG projects in 2024, in addition to more dairy interconnections.
PG&E not only blends RNG into its natural gas pipelines—where it supports gas supply throughout the service area—but it also transports fuel to compressed natural gas distribution facilities that purchase directly from RNG producers. As of October 2023, PG&E had delivered more than 1.5 billion cubic feet of RNG to transportation-only buyers that fuel up at one of the company’s 22 CNG facilities.
“PG&E’s gas strategy focuses on a diversity of win-win options that will be needed to meet our climate goals—and those of California,” said Glickman.