National Grid: Why Using Renewable Biogas Energy is Pivotal

National Grid’s US subsidiary is an integrated energy delivery company providing electricity, natural gas and clean energy to more than 20 million customers across New York and Massachusetts in the US.

The business is part of National Grid plc, one of the world’s largest investor-owned energy utilities.

Across its operations, National Grid is working to deliver a smarter, stronger and cleaner energy system.

The company is modernising its electricity and gas networks with a focus on reliability and resilience while supporting state climate targets and driving down GHG emissions.

Don Chahbazpour is Director of Policy and Regulatory Strategy at National Grid, where he leads initiatives focused on gas decarbonisation and methane emissions reduction through policy development, strategic planning and technology deployment.

His team also works closely with regulators, policymakers and industry stakeholders to highlight the role of renewable natural gas and hydrogen and how existing gas infrastructure can support the wider energy transition.

Prior to this role, Don served as Director of Climate Change Compliance.

His earlier positions at National Grid span corporate strategy, mergers and acquisitions and energy procurement.

Don shares his insights.

What is biogas and how does it help companies decarbonise? 

Biogas is an energy source captured from organic materials like manure and food waste, as well as wastewater solids, as they break down.

This process occurs in landfills, on farms or at dedicated facilities designed to process this organic matter and extract biogas.

Biogas systems recycle these waste byproducts into energy that can be used to power and heat homes, fuel vehicles or generate electricity through engines and fuel cells.

Biogas is a mix of mostly methane, about 60%, and 40% carbon dioxide.

In this “raw” form, biogas can be combusted to create renewable electricity.

When you filter out the CO₂ and other constituents leaving nearly pure methane, biogas becomes what we call renewable natural gas (RNG) or biomethane.

Because it’s simply methane, just like traditional natural gas, RNG can be put into and transmitted through natural gas pipelines.

It can be used in industrial boilers, CNG trucks or for any other energy need that natural gas usually supplies.

Biogas and RNG are often carbon-negative, the lowest life cycle carbon intensity (CI) form of energy available.

That’s because producing and using biogas prevents methane emissions.

When organic waste breakdowns in an environment that allows the methane to be released directly into the atmosphere, this directly contributes to GHG emissions.

And since methane is 86 times more powerful than CO₂ as a GHG, capturing it and converting it into RNG helps avoid those emissions.  

In addition, biogas and RNG displace fossil natural gas, so fewer fossil fuel hydrocarbons are burned for heating, etc., which also reduces CO₂ emissions. 

How are companies like National Grid using biogas to decarbonise?

National Grid is committed to delivering clean energy and supporting our states to reduce GHG emissions.

We believe that the gas network can play a critical role in the energy transition by leveraging existing infrastructure to deliver low carbon fuels and we view RNG as the most important fuel in that shift, so we’re very focused on facilitating interconnection of RNG projects. 

My favorite RNG project is at the New York City’s largest wastewater facility, Newtown Creek in Brooklyn.

We helped deploy a “biogas‑to‑grid” system, where we convert the biogas from wastewater sludge and food scraps into RNG to inject into the grid.

How does biogas stand out among renewable energy sources?

First, it offers the lowest life cycle carbon intensity of any energy source available today.

Depending on what type of waste is used to produce the gas, biogas and RNG can be deeply carbon negative.

For example, a range of dairy feedstock biogas-to-electricity (or fuel) pathways are reported in California Air Resources Board documents with a CI range from -479 to -68 g CO₂e/MJ.  

Another huge benefit of biogas and RNG is its reliability.

It’s made 24/7, regardless of the weather.

And it is infrastructure-ready, meaning no new transmission infrastructure is needed to move RNG around or to use it for heating that has previously been generated with natural gas.

It’s a much more efficient way to decarbonise commercial buildings that currently use boilers or forced air fueled by natural gas.

Because of RNG’s low CI scores, you can substitute as little as one-sixth of your traditional natural gas with RNG to make your heating system net zero.  

What are some of the other benefits of biogas and RNG?

It’s so easy for people to ignore the cost of waste, but we shouldn’t.

Americans send more than 1.4 billion tons of manure, 33 million tons of inedible food waste and one million tons of wastewater biosolids (sludge) to landfills each year.

Landfills are filling up and no one wants new ones, so waste is often hauled or sent by rail to landfills hundreds of miles from the waste source.

Biogas systems allow you to convert that waste into renewable energy close to where the waste is produced.

The Newtown Creek wastewater project is a great example.

Food waste from New York City is co-digested with wastewater sludge less than four miles from midtown Manhattan.

Waste is converted to energy right where the waste is made and right where the energy is used. 

Finally, biogas projects help meet growing energy demand with fuel and electricity made here in the US.

And while many projects, like the Newtown Creek project, are in urban areas, there many more biogas projects in rural areas, supporting farming communities with much-needed investment, construction jobs and high-paying permanent jobs. 

How does using RNG or biogas-generated electricity compare cost-wise to other decarbonisation solutions?

When analysing the cost effectiveness of any decarbonisation solution, there are many factors for companies to consider, a company’s load profile, its sustainability goals, the current state of environmental credit markets, etc.

However, in general when looking at the cost to decarbonise, a good way to compare solutions is by using a cost per ton of CO₂ avoided.

This allows you to compare apples to apples across very different technologies, whether electrification, efficiency upgrades, renewable power purchases or low-carbon fuels, and understand which pathways deliver the most decarbonisation per dollar invested. 

Typically, RNG or biogas-generated electricity is cheaper than many fancy decarbonisation options for firm low-carbon energy when value is appropriately placed on the avoided methane.

Companies evaluating their decarbonisation portfolios should consider not only the immediate cost of energy, but also the unique attributes that biogas brings: dispatchability, compatibility with existing infrastructure, the ability to serve hard-to-abate sectors and loads and more.

When these benefits are captured holistically, biogas serves as a high-impact and strategically flexible solution within the broader decarbonisation toolkit. 

Do you see biogas increasingly being recognised as a key enabler of net zero strategies and do you know how companies are incorporating biogas into their ESG strategies?

Yes, more and more large multi-national corporations are realising biogas can help them reach their zero-waste and decarbonisation goals.

IKEA, for example, recently began a pilot program in which food waste from five store restaurants and markets, including leftovers from customer meals and unsellable packaged goods, is collected and transported to an anaerobic digester to be processed into RNG and low-carbon fertiliser.

And the investment arm of Ingka Group, the largest IKEA retailer, has made a minority investment in Vanguard Renewables, a leader in converting food waste into RNG.

Ben & Jerry’s Vermont ice cream plants send their organics-rich wastewater to anaerobic digesters like those at this Purpose Energy facility, where it gets digested with other farm waste to capture the methane which is then used to generates renewable electricity that’s put back on the Vermont power grid.

Similarly, PepsiCo has started anaerobically digesting by-products like potato peels to provide fuel for heat or to generate electricity.

In 2023, AstraZeneca partnered with Vanguard Renewables to purchase RNG produced for its Newark Campus in Delaware, where the company packages 26 medicines.

By 2026, this collaboration is expected to enable as much as 650,000 MMBtu or 190,500 megawatt hours (MWh) per year, of RNG to be used across AstraZeneca’s US sites, equivalent to the energy required to heat more than 17,800 US homes for a year.

And L’Oréal USA sites procure RNG from landfill gas projects in Texas and New York, turning an otherwise wasted resource into pipeline-quality RNG that displaces the use of fossil-based natural gas. 

Why aren’t more companies aware of biogas and using it as a market solution? 

I’m somewhat mystified as to why biogas is underutilised in the voluntary carbon market space, especially considering its strong decarbonisation potential.

Many companies seem to not be fully aware of low-carbon fuel pathways, maybe because biogas doesn’t have the same visibility as wind, solar or renewable electricity products.

Another issue is the lack of widely adopted guidance for how companies should account for investments in renewable fuels like biogas and RNG.

Corporate accounting frameworks and standards, most notably GHG Protocol,  do not clearly define how to claim, credit or report biogas-related reductions within corporate emissions inventories.

This gap has prompted groups such as the Let Green Gas Count campaign and thought leaders like the Center for Resource Solutions (CRS), through its work on market-based accounting for clean fuels, to call for clearer, standardised guidance. 

As organisations like CRS and the broader clean-fuels community continue pushing for improved methodologies and as companies look beyond electricity to decarbonise thermal loads, industrial processes and seek firm reliable energy, I think biogas will be increasingly recognised as a high-impact and flexible option.

I advise companies to quickly become familiar with the benefits of biogas and RNG and join in the push for clear accounting rules.