ABC Launches Tool to Track Biogas Project Emissions
Biogas project developers, policymakers, customers, regulators, companies buying renewable energy, and anyone can use the newly launched carbon accounting tool.
It offers a more detailed assessment of data consistently and transparently, supports carbon credit trading, and attracts investments.
The American Biogas Council (ABC), a national trade association representing the entire U.S. biogas industry, has introduced a new carbon accounting tool that helps measure biogas projects' carbon emissions accurately.
The Biogas Carbon Accounting Tool (Biogas CAT) was developed by a clean energy consulting firm called EcoEngineers. It will measure the whole lifecycle emissions of biogas projects.
Biogas projects convert organic waste—food scraps, manure, or sewage—into renewable natural gas (RNG) and other energy forms, helping reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
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The tool is designed to calculate the entire lifecycle emissions of a biogas project, from waste collection to energy production and the use of by-products like fertilisers. It shows how much methane and carbon emissions are avoided during the conversion process compared to natural decay.
Many companies are stepping up efforts to reduce their environmental impact, with buying renewable energy like RNG being one of the effective ways to cut their carbon footprint and meet climate targets. The tool provides updates on how much carbon emissions are reduced by the biogas projects they support, making carbon emission reduction reporting to customers and investors more transparent and easier.
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The Biogas CAT is poised to edge out existing tools like GREET (developed for California's fuel standard programme) and become the go-to tool to measure carbon emissions. It is because the latter can only measure emissions from fuels used in transport and does not account for other factors like reducing methane emissions from waste or replacing synthetic fertilisers with digestate, a by-product of biogas production.
ABC’s Executive Director Patrick Serfass, said: "Thousands of companies, large and small, have already voluntarily committed to shrinking their carbon footprint and want to use renewable natural gas (RNG) and biogas-generated electricity as one way to do so; now we have a common way to properly account for the full lifecycle emissions of biogas projects, each of which can vary substantially in how much methane and CO2 it reduces.
"Developers, policymakers, customers, and regulators all need to accurately count carbon emissions to maximize environmental and economic benefits together."
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Source: ABC
