What you need to know:
- The RNG Coalition has reached its 500th operational facility in North America, meeting its 2025 goal early.
- Long-term SMART initiative aims to capture methane/CO2 from 43,000 waste sites by 2050.
- At the 2025 ACT Expo, leaders from Cummins and Hexagon Agility emphasized that RNG's energy density and practicality for heavy-duty vehicles.
- Availability of supporting components, like Hexagon Agility’s fuel systems and Cummins’ X15N engine, is driving RNG adoption.
Market uncertainty has become the name of the game over the past several months as truck manufacturers continue to take the necessary precautions to shield themselves.
It remains to be seen whether this will affect production and sales of long-haul Class 8 battery-electric rigs from legacy OEMs and new players like Tesla and Windrose.
But where there's uncertainty in one market, often times there's growing confidence in another.
That's exactly the case regarding renewable natural gas (RNG).
The Renewable Natural Gas Coalition announced earlier this week the commissioning of its 500th operational facility in North America, officially reaching the 2025 benchmark for the industry's Sustainable Methane Abatement & Recycling Timeline (SMART) initiative, which was established back in 2019.
When the Coalition was founded in 2011 there were only 31 RNG facilities.
The initiative's ultimate goal is to capture and control methane and C02 from over 43,000 waste sites across the continent by 2050. Unlike fossil fuel natural gas, this type of natural gas (also called biogas) is produced from organic waste, such as food waste, agricultural waste, or wastewater.
[Related: Clean Energy's new RNG production facility requires over 2,000 cows]
It's then possible to convert the avoided emissions into sources of renewable fuel, heat, and power -- including for medium- and heavy-duty trucks. This alternative fuel continues to increase in popularity as two other key hardware ingredients are are widely available: Hexagon Agility's natural gas fuel systems and the Cummins X15N engine.
[Related: Hexagon Agility doubles RNG fuel system production with new facility]
Alternative fueling, including natural gas and renewable diesel, were two of the biggest discussion topics at this year's ACT Expo in Anaheim, California.
"Natural gas is the next best solution when you look at a volumetric energy density standpoint," Hexagon Agility CCO Eric Bippus told Clean Trucking at the event. "So you can only have so much space on a vehicle and so much weight that you can give up for energy. And the next best periodic chart of elements is the methane molecule, which is natural gas.
[Related: Hexagon Agility confirms $18.7M RNG fuel system order]
Jennifer Rumsey, chair and CEO of Cummins, explained to an audience that “We’re in a very different place than we were a year ago. We always knew the energy transition was going to be dynamic, and it’s clear now that it’s going to be even more dynamic, more uncertain, more divergent than we ever thought it would be.”
The Coalition is responding to this market change. There are currently 153 RNG facilities under construction and 293 more in various stages of planning and permitting. The SMART initiative is now focusing even greater efforts to get 1,000 operational facilities by no later than 2030.
“Across our industry value-chain, members should be proud of the positive impact our collective leadership, education, advocacy, development and sustainability is having on society, in our economy and for our environment”, said Johannes Escudero, Founder & CEO of the RNG COALITION. “Together, we have accomplished something that few believed was possible. We still have a lot of work to do, but we’re going to celebrate and tell the incredible story that is the RNG industry.”
