Anaergia AD plant to supply Toyota facility

By Waste Today Magazine

3 May 2023

Anaergia Inc. has announced today that its subsidiary SoCal Biomethane LLC, Victorville, California, will supply renewable natural gas (RNG) made from food waste and municipal wastewater to the Toyota Motor North America Inc.’s (TMNA) Logistics Services Center at the Port of Long Beach in California.

Burlington, Ontario-based Anaergia says the arrangement was facilitated by renewable fuels marketer Anew Climate to FuelCell Energy’s Tri-gen system to produce carbon-negative hydrogen and electricity for the Long Beach facility. Aneargia says the logistics center is Toyota’s largest port operation, handling import and exports for North America and processing about 200,000 vehicles per year.

Connecticut-based FuelCell Energy’s Tri-gen system will produce approximately 1.3 tons of renewable hydrogen per day that will fuel Toyota Mirai vehicles, Anaergia says. The fuel cells will also produce a net 2.3 megawatts (MW) of electricity—enough to power Toyota Logistics Services Center—and will add renewable electricity to the grid, as well as produce roughly 1,400 gallons of water per day that will be used for car washing operations.    

Anaergia says its supply of RNG, which it says is the same molecule as methane, will be produced from food waste and municipal wastewater at the company’s SoCal Biomethane plant in Victorville and will be sold and delivered to FuelCell Energy through Houston-based Anew Climate, an RNG marketer for the Victorville facility. The Victorville facility uses anaerobic digestion (AD) technology to produce biogas or biomethane.

Because the methane sourced from Anaergia is made from renewable sources that otherwise emit fugitive methane emissions from decomposition, it is considered carbon negative, according to Anaergia. When this RNG classified as carbon-negative is then converted to hydrogen and electricity in FuelCell Energy’s Tri-gen system, both outputs are considered zero-emissions and carbon negative.

“We are proud to support Toyota’s decarbonization goals at one of the largest ports in the world with the supply of carbon-negative renewable natural gas that enables emissions-free hydrogen fuel,” says Yaniv Scherson, chief operating officer of Anaergia. “Carbon-negative fuels like RNG are essential to creating a net-zero emissions world. Because it’s a drop-in fuel, RNG enables rapid decarbonization. It’s an immediately dispatchable platform for electricity and hydrogen production,” says Scherson.

“RNG is a great way to produce renewable hydrogen and electricity at the scale required to support our logistics facility’s carbon neutral goal,” says Mark Yamauchi, sustainability manager for Toyota Motor North America. “And because it is made from waste, renewable natural gas creates the type of circular economy that Toyota is working to expand.”

Anaergia says it is uniquely positioned to provide end-to-end solutions for extracting organics from waste, implementing AD technology, upgrading biogas, producing fertilizer and cleaning water. The firm has customers in the municipal solid waste, municipal wastewater, agriculture and food processing industries.