JBS USA, GreenGasUSA partner on renewable natural gas production

JBS USA and GreenGasUSA are partnering to produce renewable natural gas (RNG) at multiple JBS beef and poultry processing facilities across the U.S.

Climate change and food security are two seemingly competing challenges — feeding a future world of 10 billion people with safe, nutritious, affordable food while also urgently helping the food system address environmental impacts and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

JBS believes it has a responsibility to help lead sustainable transformation by example and, as a result, is undertaking a comprehensive approach to address its own GHG emissions while also helping to empower its value chain to collectively move forward. One of JBS’s key strategies to address its emissions is to adopt circular economy technology to repurpose waste streams into renewable energy. This approach can help the food system meet the twin challenges of food security and addressing climate change impacts.

To move with speed and scale innovative circular economy solutions, JBS is partnering with GreenGasUSA to build upon JBS’s existing methane capture capabilities with a goal to maximize methane capture and RNG production.

By installing GreenGasUSA’s on-site gas upgrading systems, biogas collected from the wastewater streams of JBS facilities will be purified into pipeline-quality RNG, allowing end users to displace fossil fuel usage.

The partnership will begin with initial installations at JBS facilities in Grand Island, Nebraska and Hyrum, Utah; and the Pilgrim’s Sumter, South Carolina facility. The collaboration is expected to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at these facilities while improving wastewater operations and local air and water quality, and support the renewable energy market through the distribution of Renewable Natural Gas. The project at Pilgrim’s Sumter, South Carolina facility is scheduled to be completed in early 2025, while the Grand Island, Nebraska and Hyrum, Utah projects are slated for completion at the end of 2025.

“At JBS and Pilgrim’s, we’re committed to reducing the impact of food production by partnering with stakeholders to reduce our carbon footprint. This collaboration with GreenGasUSA is a perfect example of these efforts,” said Wesley Batista Filho, chief executive officer of JBS Foods USA. “This innovative approach takes what was once an unused byproduct of food production and transforms it to offset a significant amount of fossil fuels. This process can be a model for the rest of the industry to follow.”

The partnership with GreenGasUSA allows for a more circular solution for that biogas by converting it into a renewable fuel. Inserting this RNG into existing energy pipelines will displace the GHG emissions equivalent to 60 million miles driven by a car, or 26 million pounds of coal burned, annually.

“GreenGas is deeply committed to developing solutions that address GHG emissions in the most difficult-to-decarbonize industries,” said Marc Fetten, CEO and founder of GreenGasUSA. “We see tremendous opportunity in our partnership with JBS USA to significantly reduce on-site environmental impacts, produce sustainable, renewable energy, and support climate change initiatives in other industries.”

In addition to the announcement, JBS has initiated more than 25 projects globally to eliminate, or capture and destroy, methane emissions from organic waste lagoons at JBS facilities since 2019. Many of these projects additionally include the beneficial reuse of the methane to displace fossil fuel use. Examples include converting anaerobic systems to aerobic, thereby eliminating methane emissions; or using the captured biogas to generate renewable electricity; or producing Renewable Natural Gas for pipeline distribution; or other beneficial uses.

On a global scale, JBS said these aggressive actions to destroy and/or recover methane from its anaerobic waste treatment systems has resulted in the reduction of over 600,000 metric tons/year of greenhouse gases, equivalent to the emissions produced by an average vehicle circumnavigating the earth 193,000 times.