Red Tail Renewables Vice President Andrew Barrow is leading the way to a fenced area just beyond his company’s methane processing plant.
“Hear that faint hiss? That would be the best sound in the plant — if you can hear that, that's our gas.”
The hiss has a different timbre than the thrumming processing plant overall, heard as it courses through the custody transfer point.
“So after that sound is made, then that's gas flowing into the custody of the next company who delivers it to our customers.”
This plant is at the West Daviess County Landfill, less than 15 miles from Owensboro.
The company said by capturing and processing the methane produced naturally by the landfill, they’re taking the equivalent greenhouse gases from 4,100 cars off the road annually and converting it to natural gas to sell to customers.
Otherwise, gas would just be “flared off” — burned above ground before it can be released into the air. Methane is the world’s second-largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide, and a “key ingredient in ground-level ozone pollution,” according to the The Climate and Clean Air Coalition.
Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) may be a less buzzy segment of renewable energy projects.
Wind and solar farms can alter landscapes and farm fields, whereas RNG is usually connected to existing industrial facilities.
“Biogas modularities can be done in every community,” said Jagannadh Satyavolu. He’s with the University of Louisville’s Conn Center for Renewable Energy Research. He’s also the CEO of Bio Products LLC.
“It's easier to do than spending so much of capital on a solar farm. But again, as I said before, there is room for all these technologies.” He said. “We need all these technologies to kind of make sure that we're cost effectively making the energy. I don't want us to just make bio energy, just for the sake of making it and then making it expensive.”
“Expensive” is one reason why CenterPoint Energy of Indiana cancelled two solar projects and a wind farm out of state, said Mike Roeder, president of CenterPoint Indiana.
“It's federal policy, goods and material costs that continue to go up for everything,” Roeder said. “And the fact that they're just not as economic as they were when we kind of originally put them on the drawing board several years ago.”
They also delayed converting a coalfired power plant in Newburgh to natural gas.
Satyavolu said one industry very interested in RNG is the aviation industry to make jet fuel — whether from corn ethanol, landfills or another source of renewable natural gas — liquor distilleries.
“Once you remove the alcohol, you have something called ‘stillage,’” Satyavolu said. “And some of the distilleries here, they have these biogas plants that take the stillage and convert the organics into biogas.”
A Jim Beam distillery in Kentucky brought a processing plant online in August of 2024.
Red Tail renewables can’t say who their customers are — or what revenue might be from this plant, but they expect it to produce 500,000 MMbtu’s annually — enough to power 10,000 to 11,000 homes.
Uses for RNG include transportation, power generation and industrial applications, and is chemically the same as the natural gas that heats homes.
As a county landfill, Daviess County Judge Executive Charlie Castlen said this project is saving taxpayers money, because Redtail Renewables took over the maintenance of the well field and made improvements to it to enhance production.
The project was purchased from the previous developer in 2021. It’s a joint venture between Redtail Renewables and Pacolet Milliken, with sponsorship from Inyarek partners.
Barrow said he likes projects where they take a waste stream and make something valuable from it, and he likes experiencing the signs of a functioning biogas plant.
“When we first start a project, you're always smelling landfill gas, which smells bad, and you're seeing a flare burn, and so you're seeing gas being wasted,” he said. “And I just love how usually at the end of a project, you're not smelling it, or you're smelling much less of it, and you don't see a flare anymore. So you know you're not wasting that gas.”
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