American Biogas Council: 2023 was third year of record US biogas growth

Feb 14, 2024

Newly-released data from the American Biogas Council (ABC) indicates that 2023 was the third year of record growth across the US biogas industry, with nearly 100 new projects coming online last year, representing $1.8 billion (€1.6 billion) in capital investments.

ABC expects this growth to continue into 2024, with more than 100 new projects already projected to go into operation this year.

Landfill gas leads both investment dollars and biogas output
Landfill gas (LFG) continues to dominate in terms of both total investment and biogas output.

The US currently has 566 LFG projects, including 23 new projects added in 2023.
This growth accounts for 57% of 2023 capital investments and a corresponding 67% of new US biogas production capacity.
Significant gains in agriculture, food waste

While the growth of the landfill gas sector was voluminous last year in terms of both dollars and biogas production, 2023 saw only 4-5% growth in that sector.

In comparison, agricultural sector experienced 13.4% growth, or nearly three times greater. Seventy new farm-based projects came online in 2023, contributing 21,000 SCFM of additional biogas output and resulting in capital investments exceeding $700 million (€653.9 million).

Renewable natural gas (RNG) cluster projects contributed most to this growth and to lowering the cost per project.

Cluster projects are generally characterised by multiple farms with at least one anaerobic digester linked together by one common, central gas processing and conditioning facility to turn the biogas into RNG.

The use of more lagoon-style biogas systems (a covered, in-ground, lined pit), which are less expensive than the more commonly used engineered tanks, also contributed to lower per-project costs.

Meanwhile, growth also continued in the smaller food waste sector, on par with landfill sector growth.

Three new stand-alone food waste biogas projects became operational in 2023, adding an extra capacity of 996 SCFM, bringing the total nationwide to 107. Ten more facilities are scheduled to launch in 2024.

Renewable electricity from biogas remains dominant, but growth is in RNG

While power projects that make renewable electricity from biogas account for 69% of all biogas produced in the US, RNG projects represented 91% of all new projects that came online in 2023.

This mainly stems from policies such as the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), which promote using renewable fuels to replace fossil transportation fuels and to eliminate emissions in natural gas vehicles.

The inability for biogas projects to participate in the RFS when fueling electric vehicles continues to suppress growth in new power projects.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”