The American Biogas Council (ABC) had made available current and potential capacity of local state-level biogases, also known as, biogenic methane and other gases produced from ambient organic feedstocks.  The ABC has been in action for less than two decades, which is fairly recent as industry associations go.  ABC is providing excellent resources to authenticate the great value in the biogas production industries.  This industry evolution has been 50 years in the making.

1. In the 1970’s, the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, codified emissions as externalities.  Waste produced by humans in all forms became illegal to emit and required permission (permits) to do so.
2. The 1980’s became the initial phase of compliance.  Two technologies that were handy to commercialize were landfills (solids) and anerobic lagoons (liquids).  The economy threw itself into compliance.  By the end of that decade methane emissions became part of the climate change conversations, which are emitted by both landfills and lagoons.  Unintended outputs (and more externalities).
3. The 1990’s brought commercialization of biogas capture systems and bold (or desperate landfills and lagoons) began installing these solutions.  Some of these landfills and farms were struggling and closed for reasons other than installing biogas remediation technologies. However, “closed” facility data did not state a reason for the closure.  Frequent closures of these emerging technologies set back adoption.
4. The 2000’s brought more of the 1990’s.  More experiments.  The attack on 9/11/2001 shifted the nation’s focus to energy independence and energy alternatives were added to existing biogas power and heat solution mix.
5. By the 2010’s, commercial transportation solutions using renewable natural gas (RNG) became available.  The ABC was formed.  Climate concerns increased.
6. By 2020’s, RNG became more valuable than traditional fossil-based natural gas.  More than a cost of remediation, the 5-decade pathway of compliance, cost reduction, and market development succeeded!

The ABC state profile resources identify biogas produced by landfills, agriculture, food waste, and wastewater.  In Illinois there are 85 operating facilities across these platforms.  Agricultural and food waste facilities only account for two facilities each.  But as indicated by the ABC forecasts, there is much potential in all categories.  The largest opportunity is in agricultural feedstocks.

These estimates are very helpful.  There is great potential.  The actual opportunities are likely underestimated.  Food waste, for example, is included in the other three categories unless it is the primary feedstock for the conversion facility.  Plus, as revenue generation becomes the leading reason for establishing facilities – rather than compliance – the focus on origin of undervalued feedstocks becomes less of the focus.  As food wastes like meat and bone meal, have moved into livestock feeds, some details are lost.  The same thing has happened with used cooking oil moving into renewable diesel fuel. As externalities become internalized within an economy, it is market magic.

The ABC state-biogas profiles are a useful resource of which to be aware.  Others have highlighted this resource also.  BioCycle did an excellent article recently.