Cow Manure to Jet Fuel, AI Wins a National Prize, and the Week US Dairy Biogas Went Mainstream

Cow Manure to Jet Fuel, AI Wins a National Prize, and the Week US Dairy Biogas Went Mainstream

This week on We Are Biogas, we're doing something a little different. Before the headlines, Alexandra takes you inside Willen Biogas in Enfield, London — her first-ever visit to a full-scale anaerobic digestion facility — alongside Flávio Ascenco of ABEC, who walks her through every stage of the process from intake bay to digestate output. It's the conversation and the site visit that changed the way she sees everything we cover on this show every week. The full video is below. 🎥 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_g0lpFTE7A&t=33s Willen Biogas processes close to 30,000 tonnes of London's food waste every year — from restaurants, canteens, and local authority collections — converting it into renewable electricity for approximately 4,000 homes, recovered heat used on site, and PAS 110-certified digestate that leaves the facility as a spreading-ready organic fertiliser for farmland. Three outputs. One input. And the input is something every city on earth is producing more of every single year. Then we get into the headlines — thirteen stories this week spanning five continents, two world firsts, a national AI prize, and data that confirms what the US dairy sector has quietly been building toward for the last five years. In this episode, we cover: * Mexico's SENER develops a binding Official Mexican Standard to operationalize the country's biomethane market and enable gas grid injection — moving from roadmap to regulatory infrastructure * South Korea invests $27.5 million to localise biogas power generation technology, reducing dependence on imported generators and components as the domestic market expands * Malaysia and South Korea formalize bilateral cooperation on biogas development and carbon neutrality through Korea Environment Corporation and the South Korean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur * The US Department of Energy releases an updated 45ZCF-GREET model, delivering long-awaited regulatory certainty on emissions scoring for the 45Z clean fuel production credit — including RNG producers * Anaergia's SoCal Biomethane facility in Victorville, California becomes the first project to deliver RNG under California's SB 1440 Biomethane Procurement Program, co-digesting up to 104,000 tonnes of organic waste annually and delivering gas directly into Southwest Gas Corporation's distribution system * Polska Grupa Biogazowa completes a significant expansion of its Dzierżki biogas facility in Poland — quiet, incremental capacity growth that reflects how Central and Eastern European biogas actually scales * Bahiagás signs a biomethane protocol with CIBiogás and Captar to produce biomethane from agroindustrial residues in the Oeste Baiano region, as Brazil's domestic gas utilities begin treating biomethane as a genuine supply source * Circularity Fuels completes the world's first end-to-end pilot converting raw dairy biogas directly into sustainable aviation fuel — 65% methane, 35% CO₂, no intermediate upgrading step, ASTM D7566 certified jet fuel at the end of it * BiofuelAi, a University of Surrey spinout, wins the UK government's £1 million Manchester Prize for its AI-powered decision support platform that builds digital twins of AD plants — early pilots showed 6–10% revenue improvements and 28% carbon emissions reductions * Generate Upcycle strengthens its engineering and compliance infrastructure ahead of tightening US organics recycling mandates — building the position before the policy bites, not after * New data from the American Biogas Council confirms US dairy biogas capacity has nearly tripled since 2020 — 496 farms now operational, processing manure from approximately 2.5 million cows * A first-of-its-kind RNG facility breaks ground in central Nebraska to convert cattle manure into pipeline-quality natural gas, continuing the story of the US Great Plains as an emerging agricultural RNG geography If you work in renewable gas, waste management, infrastructure investment, agricultural energy, circular economy, food and beverage, aviation, or climate policy — this one is for you. 🌍 Explore more stories, insights, and media from across the global biogas industry: https://wearebiogas.com [https://wearebiogas.com] 📩 Want your story told, or have a topic you want us to cover next? Reach out directly: alexandra@wearebiogas.com [alexandra@wearebiogas.com] 🔗 Let’s connect and keep the conversation going: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrarng/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-arndt/]

Cross-Border Deals, A 40% Production Breakthrough, and the Week Biogas Made History Three Times

This week on We Are Biogas, the headlines span five continents, three industry firsts, and every scale of the sector — from a €26 million EBRD-backed biomethane conversion in Latvia to a sewage treatment plant in Seoul that is now producing hydrogen for city buses, to a dairy farm in Jerome, Idaho processing more than 5 million gallons of manure a day into one of North America's largest single-site RNG facilities. We're also watching Mexico write the regulatory foundations that will finally allow biomethane into its gas grid, industrial manufacturing in Italy sign one of the country's first long-term biomethane supply agreements, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries verify a technology that could boost biogas output by 40% on existing infrastructure — without any additional feedstock. In this episode, we cover: * India and Japan open high-level talks on cooperative-led compressed biogas development through dairy cooperatives — routing international expertise through rural agricultural institutions rather than industrial players * Mexico develops a roadmap for biomethane grid injection, building the regulatory foundation that transforms domestic organic waste into a networked energy commodity * The EBRD approves a €26 million InvestEU-backed loan to HoSt Group's Next Biogas to convert Latvia's Lēdurga plant into one of the Baltic's largest biomethane facilities — 80,070 MWh annually, with biogenic CO₂ capture as a co-product * Pure Data Centres Group completes Europe's first large-scale cross-border biomethane deal for a data centre — 9GWh of certified German biomethane transferred to the Irish gas network in a single transaction * Fedrigoni Group signs one of Italy's first long-term biomethane supply agreements in manufacturing — covering 40% of its Italian plants' gas requirements and cutting cradle-to-gate emissions by up to 50% * Vanguard Renewables breaks ground on a 300-tonne-per-day anaerobic digestion facility in Minnesota, producing 270,000 MMBtu of RNG annually and creating 100 jobs for the region * Royal HaskoningDHV deploys Anglian Water's Helea® technology at one of the world's largest wastewater treatment plant upgrades in Brazil — a retrofit model with implications for underutilized digestion infrastructure globally * Mitsubishi Heavy Industries achieves verification of a zeolite-based purification system capable of boosting biogas production by up to 40% on existing infrastructure — no additional feedstock required * EcoSimplex begins commercial operation of Seoul's first biogas-to-hydrogen station in Magok — processing 4,000 Nm³ of sewage biogas daily into 500kg of hydrogen for buses, police vehicles and fuel-cell cars, with an 85% emissions reduction versus grey hydrogen * AURI and Swedish firm BPC Instruments partner to develop biogas market opportunities from agricultural residues at Minnesota's Bio-industrial Innovation Center * Clean Energy Fuels starts up the East Valley Cattle RNG plant in Jerome, Idaho — its eighth dairy facility and one of the largest single-site dairies and RNG operations in North America Exclusive: We Are Biogas sits down with Lidija Zelić, head of the Serbian Biogas Association, for a conversation that goes well beyond sector development and regulatory progress. This is a story about villages trying to survive, farmers building new futures from their land, women holding rural communities together, and young people being given a reason to stay. Sixteen years of trust built one farm visit, one difficult conversation, and one community at a time. Full article read-through included. If you work in renewable gas, waste management, infrastructure investment, agricultural energy, circular economy, or climate policy — this one is for you. 📩 We Are Biogas subscribers have exclusive access to a 5% discount on the Global NRG Advisory Project Finance Masterclass. Six live modules on how you actually fund a biogas project, led by Chris Negus and Andrew Rice. Cohorts are capped at 15 seats and they are going fast. Use code WEAREBIO at checkout, or DM Chris Negus directly and tell him We Are Biogas sent you. 🌍 Explore more stories, insights, and media from across the global biogas industry: https://wearebiogas.com [https://wearebiogas.com] 📩 Want your story told, or have a topic you want us to cover next? Reach out directly: alexandra@wearebiogas.com [alexandra@wearebiogas.com] 🔗 Let’s connect and keep the conversation going: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrarng/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-arndt/]

€1.7 Billion In. A Nature Study Drops a Bombshell. And Cork Just Got Ireland's Biggest Food Waste Plant. # 9

I was supposed to be on a two-week break. Then this week's headlines landed. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners drops a €1.7 billion bioenergy fund with a €200 million European Investment Fund anchor. Nature Sustainability publishes a methane leakage study with findings that every wastewater biogas operator needs to read — and not all of them are going to like it. Ireland signs its seventh biomethane grid connection in three years. The Netherlands stacks €150 million in long-term operating subsidies behind a single waste-wood-to-biomethane project. And Budweiser installs a biogas recovery system at its Lancashire brewery and cuts gas consumption by up to 8%. The break is cancelled. Let's go. In this episode, we cover: * Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners launches Advanced Bioenergy Fund II targeting €1.5 billion — anchored by a €200 million European Investment Fund commitment backed by InvestEU and REPowerEU * South Carolina signs a landfill gas-to-RNG tax credit into law as US federal policy uncertainty pushes biogas support further toward state-level architecture * Stream BioEnergy signs its seventh biomethane grid connection in three years — this time an €80 million food and garden waste plant in Little Island, Co. Cork * The Netherlands' EemsGas project secures €149.8 million in SDE++ operating subsidies covering 15 years of production — the kind of long-term revenue certainty most markets still can't offer * ReFuels breaks ground on a new UK biomethane refuelling station on the M4 corridor, targeting 800 trucks a day and forming a dedicated low-carbon freight corridor with its Magor site in South Wales * Oklahoma State University signs a 10-year RNG partnership with Love's Alternative Energy to power its 27-bus campus transit fleet — a demand-side story the sector doesn't tell often enough * SUEZ breaks ground on a new 50,000 tpa anaerobic digestion plant in Northumberland, explicitly connected to England's mandatory food waste collection mandate that came into force in April 2026 * Nature Sustainability publishes a US national-scale assessment finding methane leakage rates ranging from 0.4% to 65% at wastewater biogas facilities — with a large fraction of current systems potentially exceeding the net-zero emission threshold * Budweiser's Samlesbury brewery cuts gas consumption by up to 8% after installing a biogas recovery system that captures energy from its own wastewater treatment process * Italy's Malya concept vehicle integrates a biomethane range extender into a compact urban EV — positioning biomethane as a solution for range anxiety, not just heavy transport * Ukraine's Poroshenko-linked agricultural group files plans for a 200,000 tpa biomethane complex in Vinnytsia Oblast, as Ukrainian producers begin shipping gas to Germany * McDonald's confirms anaerobic digestion is part of how it keeps edible food waste below 1% — and what that gap between US and UK operations tells us about policy-driven feedstock behaviour * India's REnergy Dynamics wins two compressed biogas contracts from Refex Renewables as India's CBG value chain begins to specialise into distinct roles Exclusive: Alexandra reads through this month's We Are Biogas essay — The Gap Is the Story: What May 2026 Told Us About Where Biogas Is Today. Four gaps. Four places where the distance between what biogas can do and what the conditions currently allow is most visible. And in each case, someone is closing one. The floor-building phase isn't over. It's just become more precise about which section needs laying next. "The sector is waiting for itself to close the implementation distance." If you work in renewable gas, waste management, project finance, infrastructure investment, circular economy, agricultural energy, or climate policy — this episode covers a lot of ground and doesn't let you look away. 📩 We Are Biogas subscribers get an exclusive 5% discount on the NRG Global Advisory Project Finance Masterclass — six live modules on how you actually fund a biogas project. September cohort, 15 seats, and they are going fast. Use code WEAREBIO at checkout or DM Chris Negus directly and tell him We Are Biogas sent you. We Are Biogas is your weekly breakdown of biogas, biomethane, RNG & anaerobic digestion — from farms and wastewater plants to the policy rooms and capital markets where this industry is being built. New episodes every week. Subscribe to the newsletter at wearebiogas.substack.com 🌍 Explore more stories, insights, and media from across the global biogas industry: https://wearebiogas.com [https://wearebiogas.com] 📩 Want your story told, or have a topic you want us to cover next? Reach out directly: alexandra@wearebiogas.com [alexandra@wearebiogas.com] 🔗 Let’s connect and keep the conversation going: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrarng/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-arndt/]

Biogas From Bento Boxes, Sugarcane Trucks & The Methane Nobody's Counting #8

This week on We Are Biogas, the headlines span four continents and every scale of the industry. From a 74-tonne biomethane truck hauling sugar to the Port of Santos on fuel made from the same cane it's carrying, to homes across Wrexham being heated by sewage collected from all of North Wales, to Osaka Gas converting used bento boxes into biogas at a municipal sewage plant in Japan. We're also watching the equipment supply chain consolidate in real time, institutional capital arriving in new markets, and England's mandatory food waste collection rollout delivering 95 tonnes to anaerobic digestion in its first week. In this episode, we cover: * MOL Group brings Hungary's third biomethane plant online at Szarvas — 7 million cubic metres of annual output, grid-injected, and a blueprint for Central and Eastern European expansion * Lithuania restructures domestic biomethane pricing as the sector records 2.4x growth in guarantees of origin year-on-year and joins the European ERGaR cross-border certificate trading hub * Burckhardt Compression acquires Fornovo Gas — a 57-year-old Italian biogas compressor specialist — signalling that the industrial supply chain is being priced in ahead of a scaling wave * Greenlane Renewables and Panasonic do Brasil formalize local manufacturing of biogas upgrading technology, targeting Brazil's forecast sevenfold output growth by 2035 * Egypt's first PPP wastewater plant gets a biogas power generation unit — a retrofit model with implications for hundreds of flaring facilities across the African continent * Brazil's Biorrota project deploys a nine-axle, 74-tonne biomethane truck on the sugar route to the Port of Santos, fuelled by vinasse from the sugarcane ethanol process * Seaweed-derived cobalt hydrochar boosts methane production from antibiotic-contaminated chicken manure by 25% while cutting resistance genes by 65% in a new study from Shenyang Agricultural University * Spain's Turn2X plant claims a European first — synthetic methane from green hydrogen and biogenic CO₂ injected directly into the gas distribution network * Osaka Gas converts used bioplastic bento containers into biogas via anaerobic digestion, pointing toward sewage treatment facilities as multi-stream organic waste receivers * Welsh Water's Wrexham AD facility quietly heats homes across the region using biogas from sewage collected across all of North Wales — and most people had no idea * 44,000 households in Cannock Chase recycle 95 tonnes of food waste in week one of England's mandatory collection rollout — all of it going straight to anaerobic digestion Exclusive: We Are Biogas sits down with Ben Martin, Founder and Director of Redrock Bioenergy, for a conversation that covers the living biology at the heart of every AD plant, the feedstock insight that doubled gas output from a 25% increase in volume, the structural dysfunction inside Ireland's regulatory architecture, and — the part that changes everything — the methane the entire global industry isn't counting. The emissions avoided from landfills, manure lagoons, and uncovered slurry stores that never appear in the support mechanisms, the carbon accounting, or the public case for biogas. Full article read-through included. If you work in renewable gas, waste management, infrastructure investment, circular economy, agricultural energy, or climate policy — this one is for you. 📩 We Are Biogas subscribers have exclusive access to a 5% discount on the NRG Global Advisory Project Finance Masterclass. Six live modules on how you actually fund a biogas project. Cohorts are capped at 15 seats, and they are going fast. DM Chris Negus and tell him We Are Biogas sent you. 🌍 Explore more stories, insights, and media from across the global biogas industry: https://wearebiogas.com [https://wearebiogas.com] 📩 Want your story told, or have a topic you want us to cover next? Reach out directly: alexandra@wearebiogas.com [alexandra@wearebiogas.com] 🔗 Let’s connect and keep the conversation going: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrarng/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-arndt/]

Açaí Biogas, Donut Feedstock, Latvia's Grid Revolution & Unlocking 17,000 US Projects With Kevin Gross #7

This week on We Are Biogas, we're watching the biogas world move in every direction at once — from a novel feedstock certification in the Amazon, to a grid access breakthrough in the Baltics, to a research lab in Washington State quietly tripling what we thought was possible from sewage sludge. The story this week is scale, speed, and the very specific problem standing between 2,600 operating projects and 17,000 potential ones. In this episode, we cover: * Greater Anglia diverts 104,000 kg of food waste from its UK rail network into anaerobic digestion — a fourfold increase in a single year * Hungary's Budapest Biogas Summit delivers a candid verdict: the ambition is real, the targets are set, and the regulatory framework still hasn't caught up * Latvia approves €4.7M to let small biomethane producers access the national gas grid without individual connections — and the support programme was already oversubscribed three times over * Indian villages running on cow dung digesters are cooking through an LPG supply crisis that's generating queues across the country * Sosteneo and Generali Investments move into Italian biomethane project portfolios as infrastructure-grade capital arrives to consolidate Europe's most active development market * HAM Group completes biomethane rollout across 140+ European refuelling stations — the network is built, now it's waiting on fleets * WSU researchers triple biogas yields from sewage sludge with a two-stage system and a patented bacterial strain — and cut disposal costs in half in the same process * The EU-funded CARMA-H2 project converts biogas directly into hydrogen through a ceramic membrane in a single step, with capture-ready biogenic CO₂ as a by-product * Researchers in Amapá, Brazil receive viability certification for a biogas pathway from açaí seeds that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world * Krispy Kreme's UK operations send 25% of unsold doughnuts to anaerobic digestion — and the gap between their UK and US waste behaviour tells you exactly what policy pressure does to feedstock supply Exclusive: We Are Biogas sits down with Kevin Gross, founder of Gross & Co., for a deep dive into the $450 billion engineering frontier sitting largely dormant across the United States. With room for 17,000 more biogas projects and only a quarter of total potential captured, Kevin breaks down why most projects die before they're built — and how his firm's assumptions-first methodology and six-week sprint to a Class 2 estimate is changing the development calculus entirely. Full article read-through included. If you work in renewable gas, waste management, infrastructure investment, circular economy, or sustainable agriculture — this one covers a lot of ground. Stay for all of it. 📩 Interested in connecting with the biogas investment and advisory community? Email Chris Negus at NRG Global Advisory to secure your discounted seat today. chris@globalnrgadvisory.co.uk 🌍 Explore more stories, insights, and media from across the global biogas industry: https://wearebiogas.com [https://wearebiogas.com] 📩 Want your story told, or have a topic you want us to cover next? Reach out directly: alexandra@wearebiogas.com [alexandra@wearebiogas.com] 🔗 Let’s connect and keep the conversation going: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrarng/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-arndt/]