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Writer-s-Bloc

What is renewable natural gas and where does it come from?

The 'other' natural gas

Kristy Dyer, whose column Sustainability Spotlight usually appears in this spot every second week, is on an extended leave. Her column is expected to return in the spring.

This is the first of a two-part series about renewable natural gas by our new climate action columnists Janet Parkins and Eli Pivnick. The second part wil appear Jan. 7.

According to FortisBC, renewable natural gas is a low-carbon energy that can help B.C. reach its climate action goals and provides an option for its customers to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions.

But what is it really? The name “renewable natural gas” is a marketing term coined in North America to describe methane gas produced from biological waste. Outside North America, it is more accurately known as “biomethane”.

RNG is methane gas, chemically identical to fossil natural gas, sourced from decaying organic material. Nearly all available RNG is created in landfills, sewage treatment plants and livestock manure ponds on large industrial farms. When animal waste and trash decay in the absence of oxygen, the microbes that break them down produce gases that contain methane. The methane can be captured, purified and pumped into a pipeline.

In the pipeline, RNG is indistinguishable from its fossil fuel counterpart. Burning RNG produces the same amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) as fossil gas. It’s only considered a “carbon-neutral” fuel because its source materials are already considered to be “in” the atmosphere.

FortisBC's goal is to have 75% of the gas in its system be renewable, or low-carbon, by 2050. That could prove to be unrealistic. Natural Resources Canada found nationally sourced RNG can only supply 3.3% of our natural gas needs. To meet its target, FortisBC plans to purchase about 70% of its RNG from the Eastern U.S., Alberta and Ontario by 2030, in the form of credit-like “environmental attributes” for RNG made in other places.

The process is renewable gas is created and used by a gas utility, which sells that gas to its customers as fossil gas. FortisBC sells an equivalent amount of fossil gas, using the purchased carbon neutral “attribute” from the renewable gas produced elsewhere to brand its fossil gas as “renewable.”

This is a confusing process, currently has no independent agency or system oversight to ensure FortisBC and other gas utilities aren’t double counting the carbon neutrality of RNG at both the source and use locations.

FortisBC’s proposed largest future RNG suppliers use uncommon production practices. One is injecting high-pressure steam at extremely hot temperatures (above 8,000 C) into waste, producing a mix of gases called “syngas” or synthesis gas, which is then processed again with heat to produce pure methane for RNG. Energy is lost at each step of the process.

Another method is similar in the use of high-steam and high-heat, but uses waste wood, losing about half the initial wood energy in the process. That technology is untested at a commercial scale and research on non-RNG wood biomass plants in B.C. has found evidence companies sometimes use whole, previously live trees rather than wood waste.

FortisBC lists two Ontario cities among its largest future RNG suppliers—Greater Napanee and Hamilton. As of March 2024, Greater Napanee was not aware of the proposed project, and no permit applications had been submitted. The Hamilton project was to begin producing renewable natural gas in 2023, but in 2019 Hamilton city councillors unanimously rejected the proposal and later signed a contract with another company to collect its waste until 2028.

Beyond its existing contracts, FortisBC’s prospects of buying cheap, plentiful RNG from elsewhere appear slim because FortisBC must compete with utilities in Quebec, New York, Nevada, Massachusetts and Washington state that have pitched RNG to their customers as a way to decarbonize.

RNG is methane produced from biological sources and so it is, in theory, renewable. Compared to fossil methane (natural gas) it is very limited in supply and will never be able to provide more than a very small portion of our needs.

Janet Parkins is a member of Frack-Free BC and Climate Action Now! North Okanagan.

(Editor's note: FortisBC says the REN process uses only wood waste and not live trees.)

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.



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