Anaergia to supply RNG for Toyota’s fuel cell vehicles

Anaergia said May 2 its SoCal Biomethane subsidiary would supply renewable natural gas (RNG) to Fuel Cell Energy’s Tri-gen system that will produce carbon-negative hydrogen and electricity for Toyota North America’s logistics service centre in Long Beach, California.

The Tri-gen system will produce about 1.3 tons/day of renewable hydrogen which will fuel Toyota Mirai vehicles. The fuel cells will also produce a net 2.3 MW of electricity – enough to power the logistics service centre – and will add renewable electricity to the grid. 

Anaergia will produce RNG for the programme from its SoCal Biomethane plant in Victorville, California, using food waste and municipal wastewater. 

Converting the RNG to renewable electricity is expected to avoid more than 9,000 tons/year of grid-associated greenhouse gas emissions, while the renewable hydrogen produced from the RNG will avoid more than 4,000 tons/year of emissions normally associated with the steam reformation of fossil natural gas.

Because the methane sourced from Anaergia is made from renewable sources that otherwise emit fugitive methane emissions from decomposition, it is considered carbon negative, as are hydrogen and electricity produced using RNG.

“Carbon-negative fuels like renewable natural gas are essential to creating a net-zero emissions world,” Anaergia COO Yaniv Scherson says. “Because it’s a drop-in fuel, renewable natural gas enables rapid decarbonisation – it’s an immediately dispatchable platform for electricity and hydrogen production.”