Natural gas utility Spire Inc. is developing a renewable natural gas (RNG) facility in Kansas City, MO, the first in the area, via a venture with the city’s water utility.
KC Water selected Spire to develop the facility at the Blue River Wastewater Treatment Plant. The upgrade, expected to be completed in 2025, could produce about 0.3 Bcf/year of RNG, enough fuel to meet the gas needs of about 4,300 homes, according to Spire.
Upgrades to recycle waste at Blue River began in 2021 for biosolids and biogas, aka RNG. The facility processes about 75 million gallons/day of wastewater, nearly all (98%) of Kansas City’s waste. The related Blue River Biosolids Facility is expected to be completed this year.
KC Water, which serves about 170,000 customers, estimated that the RNG addition could further reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20,000 tons/year of carbon dioxide equivalent.
As part of the addition, the plant as designed would capture methane emissions from the wastewater treatment to generate the RNG. The RNG would be used to serve natural gas customers, Spire’s Christy Engemann, manager for Sustainability, told NGI.
Spire’s Nick Popielski, vice president of Sustainability, noted that the RNG would help to meet customers’ “growing interest in a lower carbon, affordable and reliable source of energy.”
Spire is seeking approval from Missouri regulators to initiate a voluntary carbon offset program. The program would allow customers to purchase environmental attributes tied to RNG to offset some carbon emissions associated with natural gas use.
Spire serves 1.7 million gas customers in Alabama, Mississippi and Missouri. The utility is expecting a landfill RNG project in St. Louis to come online sometime in early 2025, according to Engemann. The project could initially produce about 1.2 Bcf/year and displace about 0.7% of Spire’s 2022 natural gas purchases in eastern Missouri.
The largest end-user market for RNG today is the trucking sector. However, utility executives have suggested that demand from other sectors could grow.
In related news, Clean Energy Fuels Corp., one of the largest RNG distributors for the transportation industry, has completed construction on a dairy production facility at the Drumgoon Dairy in Lake Norden, SD.
The facility has begun injections into an undisclosed interstate natural gas pipeline system, according to the company. Using waste produced by about 6,500 dairy cows, the facility may produce about 1.66 million gasoline gallons equivalent (GGE)/year of RNG at full capacity.
The Newport Beach, CA-based firm sources some of its RNG through third-party contracts. It is aiming to produce about 105 million GGE by 2026.
Clean Energy’s Clay Corbus, senior vice president of Renewables, said several RNG projects are in the queue.
The Drumgoon project was financed through a joint venture with BP plc and developed by Dynamic Renewables.
