South Jersey Industries and White Plains, New York-based OPAL Fuels Inc. on Thursday said they entered into a 50/50 joint venture to develop, construct, own and operate renewable natural gas facilities. The first facility, the Atlantic RNG facility, will be at the Atlantic County Utilities Authority solid waste landfill in Egg Harbor Township.
“This project is consistent with our comprehensive clean energy plan, Leading the Way,” Mike Renna, CEO and president, South Jersey Industries, said. “Its implementation underscores our current progress and renewed vision to achieve Scope 1 and 2 carbon-neutral operations by 2040 and lead our employees, customers and communities to a better today and tomorrow. This and future projects with OPAL Fuels will permit us to accelerate achieving these goals.”
“The development of the Atlantic RNG facility with SJI marks just the beginning of our relationship, as, together, we will bring more production and distribution of RNG to New Jersey,” Jonathan Maurer, co-CEO of OPAL Fuels, said. “This joint venture furthers OPAL Fuels’ growth strategy as we look forward to leveraging our operational expertise to work with landfills to maximize the value of their resource and meet their ESG goals faster by displacing diesel fuel with RNG in heavy-duty truck fleets.”
The Atlantic RNG facility will capture naturally occurring biogas, made up in large part by methane from the landfill, which will be upgraded to meet the required quality standards for distribution and sale. The Atlantic RNG facility is anticipated to have a nameplate capacity of 2,500 standard cubic feet per minute of landfill gas and is expected to produce more than 603,000 million British thermal units, or equivalent to nearly 4.8 million gallons of gasoline per year of RNG.
The new Atlantic RNG facility will replace a previously decommissioned power plant and the RNG will be injected into the South Jersey Gas network, an SJI subsidiary, making this project the first of its kind in the gas company’s natural gas distribution system.
