Aemetis announced that the company’s board of directors has approved the establishment of a new subsidiary named Aemetis Carbon Capture California’s Central Valley is well established as a major region for large-scale natural gas production and CO2 injection projects due to the geologic formation of subsurface shale caprock that safely contains and retains gases.

The company’s carbon capture business unit will initially capture, dehydrate, compress, and sequester CO2 from Aemetis Biogas dairy lagoon anaerobic digester projects to further reduce the carbon intensity (CI) of its dairy Renewable Natural Gas (RNG).

The planned 52 dairies in the Aemetis Biogas projects are expected to produce approximately 1.4 million MMBtu’s of dairy Renewable Natural Gas and about 50,000 metric tonnes of CO2 each year.  The Aemetis ethanol plant currently produces approximately 160,000 metric tonnes of CO2 per year, and the renewable jet/diesel plant under development is expected to produce 160,000 tonnes per year of CO2.

“Significant new legislation has been introduced in Congress to support the existing California LCFS and IRS 45Q carbon intensity reduction programs with additional carbon sequestration grants, investment tax credits, and other support,” said Eric McAfee, Chairman and CEO of Aemetis, Inc. 

“The formation of Aemetis Carbon Capture, Inc. is a key milestone in achieving a significant increase in the value of dairy biogas by adding Carbon Capture & Sequestration to reduce the carbon intensity of the RNG produced from dairies.  The Aemetis Biogas projects with carbon sequestration by Aemetis Carbon Capture provide dairies with a compelling opportunity to increase annual cash flow and avoid liability for methane emissions under the LCFS program.  Over the next five years, Aemetis plans to invest more than $300 million into dairy RNG and CCS projects that are already operating or in development,” added McAfee.

The Aemetis Biogas Central Dairy Digester Project is a collection of dairy digesters and a 36 mile pipeline with gas cleanup and compression that are built, owned, and operated by Aemetis Biogas LLC.  The project produces renewable methane gas which is converted to negative carbon intensity RNG for transportation use to displace petroleum diesel fuel.