Calgren Dairy Fuels

Learn more about the first dairy digester pipeline cluster in California.

Calgren Dairy Fuels and its affiliates have been producing renewable fuels in California’s Central Valley since 2008. One of these affiliates, Calgren Dairy Fuels, has recently added renewable compressed natural gas to its slate of products. The project collects biogas from anaerobic digesters being built at 12 Tulare County dairies, cleans it to produce pipeline-quality renewable natural gas, then injects the product gas into SoCalGas’ pipeline for transport to existing CNG refueling stations elsewhere in California.

This is the first such dairy digester pipeline cluster in California and is expected to be the largest dairy biogas operation in the U.S. after full build-out. It is also the first time that carbon-negative renewable natural gas produced from cow manure has been injected directly into SoCalGas’ natural gas system. The facility will be capable of injecting 2.26 billion cubic feet of renewable natural gas annually. This renewable natural gas is captured from methane produced from the manure of more than 75,000 cows, displacing proximately 130,000 tons of greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere each year – the equivalent of taking more than 25,000 passenger cars or 1,200 heavy-duty trucks off the road annually.

This project, though primarily privately funded, did receive incentives from California’s Dairy Digester Research and Development Program and the California Public Utility Commission’s Biomethane Incentive Program. As of February 2019, Calgren Dairy Fuels announced that renewable natural gas produced at Calgren's dairy digester facility in Pixley, California is being injected into SoCalGas® pipelines.

Read the press release