Renewable Natural Gas from California’s First Food Waste-to-RNG Facility Now Flowing Into PG&E’s Pipelines

Fighting climate change and healing the planet requires leadership and innovation, and PG&E is proud to be among those helping advance new technologies that will evolve the natural gas system to deliver clean, green energy to end users. 

On Wednesday, PG&E joined Divert Inc. for the grand opening of Divert’s new, first-of-its-kind facility for California, which processes unsold food products into carbon-negative renewable energy that is being injected into PG&E’s natural gas transmission lines. 

More than 63 million tons of food are wasted in the U.S. each year, which contributes significantly to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — nearly 14%. California alone discards 6 million tons of food annually. Portions of this food waste will be processed at the Turlock facility into RNG and transported throughout Northern California via PG&E’s pipeline network.

Divert’s facility is equipped to offset up to 23,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, the equivalent of taking nearly 5,000 gas-powered cars off the road and helping bring California closer to reaching its net-zero carbon pollution goals by 2045.

PG&E Gas Engineering Vice President Austin Hastings (pictured above) spoke about the significance of the partnership at a ceremony today in Turlock.

“By accepting renewable natural gas made from unsold food products into our pipeline system, we’re contributing to a more sustainable California and advancing toward our goal of a net-zero energy system by 2040. It’s a win for our customers, our state and our climate goals,” he said.

This is a historic moment for PG&E. The State of California is the first food waste-to-RNG facility is helping scale technology that is working to address state, national and global challenges around food waste, emissions, and demand for clean, renewable energy head-on. 

PG&E continues to support projects that increase the production of new, California-produced RNG and the company has made a commitment to inject 30 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of renewable natural gas into its system per year by 2030.  

In support of this commitment PG&E has worked for the better part of a decade to help develop, support, and scale the production of California-produced RNG, including connecting more than 30 dairy farms in Northern and Central California through seven RNG interconnection points. PG&E received its first commercial RNG in 2021. 

To-date, about 5 million cubic feet of RNG flows into PG&E’s pipelines per day, removing over 32,000 tons of methane emissions from the atmosphere. As of October 2024, PG&E has received more than 3.4 billion cubic feet (3.4 Bcf) of clean, renewable natural gas into its pipeline system, mostly from dairies. This year alone, PG&E has added four new RNG projects including Divert.

In October, PG&E along with Ameresco and Republic Industries celebrated the opening of California’s largest landfill-gas-to-RNG in Pittsburg, Calif., In late November, PG&E celebrated the interconnection of the CalBio RNG plant in Hilmar, Calif.