Top 10 Bioeconomy Markets and Predictions for 2019

6. First-gen diversification

News arrived just around Christmas from California that Aemetis Biogas LLC, closed a $30 million equity investment without any dilutive stock issuances by Aemetis, Inc. and funded the first $8.3 million tranche to subsidiary Aemetis Biogas to build, own and operate dairy biomethane digesters, pipelines and gas cleanup/compression facilities primarily under 20-year agreements with dairy farms in California.

Dairies produce about 25% of California’s methane emissions and have become targets of carbon regulations aimed to reduce climate change. With a carbon intensity under the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard of about negative 300, dairy biomethane is highly valuable, but needs to be collected at the dairy, pipelined to a central processing facility, then cleaned and compressed for use as Renewable Natural Gas in converted diesel trucks and other natural gas vehicles.

The project will initially connect about a dozen dairies to Aemetis’ ethanol plant in Keyes, California, with expansion plans to more than three dozen dairies in the local area. The Aemetis plant supplies Wet Distillers Grain feed to about 100 dairies.

It’s a sign of first-gen diversification we have seen most especially at Green Plains, which has been shedding ethanol assets and getting headlong into higher-value protein.