size farms and networking them as they join in a hub-and-spoke model to create economy of scale,” he says. “We view these projects as a triple win. It’s a new revenue stream for farms, good for customers wanting more sustainability and lower carbon forms of energy, and it helps the environment by capturing 25 times more emissions.” Align RNG builds on Smithfield’s
Optima KV pilot project in Duplin County, North Carolina, which collects biogas from digesters on a collection of hog farms, processes it to pipeline-grade natural gas and injects it directly into a natural gas pipeline running through eastern North Carolina. Smithfield sells the biogas to Duke Energy. “That project gave Smithfield confidence for Align RNG,” Westerbeek says. “A foundational base of knowledge is precursory.” Last summer, Dominion and Smithfield
launched North Carolina’s largest renew- able gas project, locating it in Duplin and Sampson counties, which rank among the top areas in the U.S. in hog and pig sales. The project is patterned after
Optima KV. Annually, RNG produced from the hog farms is expected to gener- ate enough energy to power more than 3,500 homes.
A long outlook Although Align RNG was
announced as a 10-year venture, both Dominion and Smithfield expect it to continue indefinitely. “We want a lot of the projects done in 10 years, but there are certainly opportunities for it to go a lot longer,” Westerbeek says. He adds that Smithfield intends to have 90% of the finishing space — farms where hogs are raised to market weight — in Virginia and North Carolina involved in manure-to-energy projects over the next several years. At the end of a decade, Dominion
hopes to yield enough energy from the RNG projects to reliably serve about 70,000 homes and businesses. “For us, this is a sustainable business model,” Childress says. “It provides new revenue for farmers and is environmentally sound. This is an important part of our
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portfolio. Align will be around for a long time.” In addition to its RNG project with
Smithfield, Dominion late last year joined forces with Vanguard Renewables and Dairy Farmers of America in the first nationwide network of waste-to-energy projects involving dairy farms. Using the same model as Dominion’s venture with Smithfield, cow manure will be stored in covered digesters on a cluster of dairy farms, where bacteria will break it down to produce methane. The methane will then be transported via underground gathering lines to a central conditioning facility where it will be converted to RNG. Combined, the hog and dairy projects are expected to generate enough clean energy to heat almost 100,000 homes while significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions from farms across the nation. That, says Childress, is on target with
Dominion’s goals to produce new forms of clean energy. “We are committed to growing the amount of RNG produced in the U.S.”
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