Director, Environmental Services Tampa Electric Company Tampa, FL
An important environmental opportunity is the recovery and beneficial use of biogas as a renewable energy resource, including the production of renewable natural gas (RNG) as a means of reducing emissions and providing other environmental benefits. RNG is a term used to describe biogas that has been upgraded to use in place of fossil natural gas, either locally or remotely. Florida has 70 operational biogas projects with potential for 375 new projects to be developed based on available organic material. RNG presents the opportunity for billions of dollars in capital investment in Florida and thousands of construction jobs and hundreds of long-term jobs. Raw biogas is upgraded into RNG and ultimately delivered and used by consumers in the residential, commercial, industrial, and power sectors. This renewable source of energy provides substantial reductions of conventional pollutants and greenhouse gases (zero and sometimes negative emissions). It is resilient, consistent, economical, and local. Biogas captured from landfills or concentrated animal feed operations which is cleaned and injected into the gas utility system or into vehicles can offsets emissions that were either a result of a collection and combustion process and converted to carbon dioxide (lower Global Warming Potential); or were previously fugitive emissions. The processing of RNG requires treatment for a variety of constituents depending on the sources of biogas supply to allow it to meet the definition of natural gas. RNG is a key opportunity for natural gas utilities and their customers to meet increasing carbon reduction demands, is a local fuel that does not require interstate gas pipeline transportation, and a hedge against price volatility. Many policy drivers have recently focused on electrification but greater consideration should be given to the benefits of RNG. Current carbon markets recognize the benefits of the value of RNG and a variety of partnership structures are available to implement these emerging opportunities.
