Rallying for RNG

by Caitlin Scheresky (Biomass Magazine) In partnership with Guidehouse and Vanguard Renewables, the RNG Coalition presented its first RNG Media Day on June 18. Hosted by the RNG Coalition’s Senior Manager of Communications, Dylan Chase, the webinar kicked off with the exciting announcement that the coalition reached its 2025 Sustainable Methane Abatement & Recycling Timeline benchmark of 500 operational facilities in the U.S. months ahead of schedule, with a total of 505 operational facilities. Spearheaded by the RNG Coalition, SMART is an initiative to capture and control methane and CO2 produced from the 43,000-plus aggregated organic waste sites in North America by 2050, with incremental benchmarks set in 2025, 2030 and 2040.

Another 153 RNG facilities are under construction, according to the Coalition, and yet another 293 are in planning stages.

The RNG Coalition’s CEO, Johannes Escudero, shared renewable natural gas’s (RNG) history in the U.S. and the Coalition’s role in the industry’s explosive growth. RNG, according to Escudero, is “the derivative product from any organic material that decomposes naturally, creating a cocktail of gas constituents, primarily consisting of methane and CO2.” The first U.S. RNG facility appeared in New York in 1982. In 2011, nearly 30 years later, the Coalition was founded, he said, and at the time only 31 RNG facilities were operational in the U.S. “We knew what our industry was capable of with the right policy support, with the right public support and with sufficient market demand,” Escudero stated, citing the jump to 505 operational facilities only 14 years later.

Escudero attributed this success to the Coalition’s partners and supporters both at the federal and individual level. “Someone once said that if you’re leading and nobody is following, then you’re not really leading—you’re walking,” he continued. The Coalition’s mission—leadership, education and events, advocacy (U.S. and Canada), development and industry growth, and sustainable solutions and markets (LEADS)—ties it all together.

Following Escudero, Geoff Dietz, senior director of federal affairs for the Coalition, dove into the hot-button topic of federal tax credits, starting with the history behind the U.S. EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard. The RFS’s goal, created in 2005, was to support the development and commercialization of biofuels. Under former President George W. Bush in 2007, the RFS was authorized via the Energy Independence and Security Act to expand feedstocks and fuel types, and another expansion in 2014 under the Obama administration permitted RNG and biogas under the cellulosic biofuel category. Today, RNG comprises 95% of available cellulosic biofuel credits.

As for more recently crafted policy, Dietz pointed to Section 45Z Clean Fuel Production Tax Credit—which currently offers up to $1 per gallon for non-aviation fuels and up to $1.75 per gallon for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF)—as opportunistic for RNG, though it is subject to change under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act making its way through Congress. Dietz also suggested potential for RNG in Section 45V, which focuses on clean hydrogen. “RNG can play a role as a feedstock of that clean hydrogen,” he explained. And although not as well-known as the other Section 45 policy, 45Q, the carbon sequestration credit, offers potential; one of the two main gases within RNG is biogenic CO2, which has encouraged interest to take advantage of the credit.

Sam Wade, vice president of public policy at RNG Coalition, briefly touched on state-specific RNG policies. At current, four states have a clean fuel standard passed and in effect, with more seeing statewide advocacy. California has led the way with its Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which has displaced over 70% of transportation diesel with cleaner alternatives and lowered California’s fuel carbon intensity (CI) by nearly 20%. RNG, according to Wade, offers the lowest-CI clean fuel.

Utilities are increasingly being subject to decarbonization goals through RNG channels, including renewable gas and clean heat standards. Oregon, which Wade described as a “leader in RNG,” set the statewide voluntary goal to add as much as 30% of RNG into the state’s pipeline system by 2050 under 2019’s Senate Bill 98.

In a jump to real-world examples, Coalition member Guidehouse’s Director of Energy Transition, Danielle Vitoff, demonstrated how far the industry has come in the past year, presenting economic data from mid-2024. Vitoff began with impressive statistics: the RNG industry supported 55,664 jobs in 2024, with 57% of employment coming from projects under construction, and generated $7.2 billion in gross domestic product. The majority of these RNG jobs were middle income and required no advanced degrees. Facilities in progress as of mid-2024 could support roughly 94,000 jobs and generate $10.8 billion in GDP, Vitoff said.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) was found to have the largest economic impact due to its high levels of RNG production, according to Vitoff. Utilization of such RNG is focused on three sectors: transportation and freight, in which RNG has found itself for the better part of its lifespan and garners support from policies including the RFS and LCFS; utilities, which have faced increasing pressure to decarbonize and develop RNG drop-in compatibilities; and the hard-to-abate industries, which also face decarbonization pressure along supply chains.

Michael O’Laughlin, CEO of Vanguard Renewables, spoke to the importance of localized anaerobic digestion and the advantage the U.S. currently holds. “The U.S. is really positioned well as a global leader because of the [pipeline] infrastructure that exists today,” he said. O’Laughlin cited Vanguard’s “fully circular RNG solution” as an example of such infrastructure. Food and beverage industry waste is supplied to anaerobic, farm-based digesters via organics preprocessing, which is then converted to animal bedding and fertilizer, effectively diverting waste from the landfill.

Anaerobic digesters benefit individual farmers and local economies by adding revenue, reducing farm odors and producing useful byproducts, as well as national companies looking to meet zero-waste-to-landfill goals, O’Laughlin continued. For now, he said, RNG must meet global regulation requirements, including production processes, existing gas and infrastructure, and multi-industry demand—a challenge the industry is hungry to take on. READ MORE