The Hampton Roads Sanitation District handles up to 54 million gallons of wastewater each day that flow into its Atlantic Treatment Plant in Virginia Beach.
Treating all that sewage leaves behind a substance called biogas,which is largely made up of methane, a major source of climate pollution.
With a new project planned for the site, local officials hope to take advantage of the gas as a fuel source while also cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Virginia Natural Gas is partnering with HRSD at the plant to turn its byproduct into renewable natural gas, or RNG.
“We have this biogas that's a waste product. We're not using it as effectively as we wish we could be,” said BJ Ward, a solids process engineer at HRSD. “So this is a great solution.”
Virginia Natural Gas serves about 310,000 homes and businesses in southeastern Virginia, said Carl Garofalo, director of sustainability and decarbonized fuel solutions for parent company Southern Company Gas.
As with elsewhere across the country, the company’s seeing a surge in energy demand primarily driven by the rise in artificial intelligence powered by data centers.
“We're seeing that increase and that's calling for the build-out of more energy delivery systems,” Garofalo said. “Things like renewable natural gas plants can bring local natural gas capacity into areas where there's not traditional production.”
Biogas is produced through the breakdown of organic matter, which typically occurs at landfills, farms and wastewater treatment plants.
Renewable natural gas is biogas that has been processed to pipeline-ready purity standards. It is different from traditional natural gas, which is a fossil fuel extracted from the earth, similar to oil.
The Southeastern Public Service Authority, which operates the Regional Landfill in Suffolk, launched its own on-site RNG project in 2023.
Virginia’s Energy Innovation Act of 2022 incentivized natural gas utilities to invest in biogas as a lower-carbon fuel source.
HRSD already reuses some of its biogas to generate steam energy. But most of it is currently disposed of through an industry-standard method called flaring.
Flaring burns off the biogas into the atmosphere. The goal is to convert methane into carbon dioxide, which also warms the planet but is less potent. (Methane has a warming effect at least 28 times greater than carbon dioxide, which is the most common greenhouse gas.)
The new project will reduce or ideally eliminate the need for flaring, Ward said.
She said HRSD looked into building its own RNG plant but determined the cost was too high. The district instead issued a request for proposals, which attracted Virginia Natural Gas.
The gas company plans to invest $30 million at the Atlantic Treatment Plant. The fuel would be injected into an existing pipeline that runs nearby, enough to power the equivalent of about 4,000 homes for a year.
If approved by state regulators, the project will add about 40 cents to customers’ monthly gas bills, Garofalo said.
The gas company plans to earn money through a federal system that tracks and monetizes the “environmental attributes” of lower-carbon fuels. HRSD will earn revenue from supplying the biogas.
Renewable natural gas projects have drawn criticism from environmental groups, which argue the process is expensive, provides mostly short-term benefits and requires continued investment in infrastructure still tied to fossil fuels.
Proponents argue RNG is a useful way to replace traditional natural gas, particularly in industrial sectors where cutting emissions is more difficult.
