Pacific Gas and Electric Co. commissioned its latest renewable natural gas pipeline interconnection project as the multi-utility followed up on a recently announced renewable natural gas strategy, part of a plan to be "climate positive" by 2050.

The PG&E Corp. subsidiary and its partner in the project, low-carbon fuel company Aemetis Inc., completed testing for the interconnection, along with a renewable natural gas, or RNG, cleanup and compression unit in Keyes, Calif., the companies said in a June 10 news release. Both components are part of the Aemetis Biogas Central Dairy Digester Project, a network of anaerobic digestors that will break down manure, capture the resulting methane gas and process it into RNG.

The interconnection will allow the facility to deliver RNG directly to customers in the transportation sector. When the project is fully built out, it will collect more than 1.6 MMBtu of RNG per year from roughly 60 dairy farms. It will include a new 40-mile gathering line and will use PG&E's transmission system to deliver the RNG to end users.

The partners estimated that the project eventually will capture greenhouse gas emissions from the dairies equivalent to the footprint of 1.1 million cars. Three of the dairy digesters are operational, with five scheduled for completion by year-end 2022 and another five slated to begin construction in summer 2022.

PG&E's goal of being "climate positive" means it would remove more greenhouse gases from the environment than it emits.

More RNG interconnections

The commissioning is PG&E's fourth interconnection completed in the last six months, the company said. PG&E expects to connect to six RNG projects by the end of 2022 and several more within a few years, the company said in its Climate Strategy Report released June 8.

Projects with operational dates set for 2022 and 2023 will yield more than 60 Bcf of RNG per day, or roughly 3% of the company's daily system throughput, according to the report.

"We know that we're going to continue to invest in our gas system," PG&E Corp. Chief Sustainability Officer and Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs Carla Peterman said during the company's June 10 analyst day. "But even as we invest in the safety and reliability, we know that under any greenhouse gas scenario, the volume of the gas needs to go down. It needs to become greener."

RNG road map

Through 2030, PG&E will seek to convert customers in the commercial and industrial sectors who cannot easily electrify, giving priority to sites near disadvantaged communities, the report said. The endeavor will reduce Scope 3 and 4 CO2-equivalent emissions by 2.5 million tonnes through 2030, PG&E projected. Scope 3 emissions are associated with end-use emissions, while Scope 4 refers to emissions reductions enabled by a company's actions.

PG&E also set a target for RNG to make up 15% of its core gas throughput by 2030. In February, California regulators established a renewable gas standard that will require investor-owned gas utilities to source RNG and other forms of biomethane equal to about 12.2% of their annual gas demand from core customers by 2030.

PG&E committed to investing $25 million to research sustainable uses for woody biomass, saying that converting it to RNG is a "promising area." A 2020 law expanded California's definition of RNG to allow production from biomass.

California's extended drought and bark beetle infestations have created excess forest debris that has contributed to wildfires, PG&E said in the report. PG&E has been found responsible for past wildfires.

PG&E will pilot hydrogen blending to have its system ready to carry the zero-carbon fuel by 2030. In the residential sector, PG&E will try to electrify building heating and avoid natural gas capital projects through targeted electrification.

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