Calgren Dairy Fuels (CDF) is the first California dairy digester pipeline cluster that upgrades dairy biogas to biomethane for utility pipeline injection. Funded through the Dairy Digester Research and Development Program, with 20 digesters serving 22 dairies, it is one of the largest collective dairy biogas operations in the country.

Joey Airoso is a Central Valley dairy farmer whose operation feeds into the CDF cluster. Says Airoso of the project, it “gives us a way to tell our story and also add to the story. We can continue to protect the environment, but keep heading down this path of energy independence.”

Working with multiple state agencies, CDF has successfully demonstrated the ability to deliver dairy compressed natural gas clusters to market, achieve near-term GHG emission reductions, and reduce criteria pollutant emissions both on dairies and on California roadways. The conditioning facility and Southern California Gas injection point that the CDF supplies is located at the Calgren Ethanol Refinery in Pixley, a disadvantaged community, and is expected to create and support approximately 575 full-time jobs.

According to CDF, ten digesters are currently operational and sending biogas to the CDF centralized conditioning facility. Another two digesters are under construction and will come online in 2020. With the completion of the first twelve digesters in the coming months, over 150,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent will be captured from over 70,000 cows. This project will deliver over 3 million gallons of transportation fuel a year into the California compressed natural gas market, which will be preferentially available for conversion of existing fossil fuel freight transport to near‑zero emission compressed natural gas engines.