December 14, 2021

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Founded 10 years ago, Amp Americas is a vertically integrated company specializing in building, managing, operating, and maintaining facilities focused on converting dairy waste into carbon-negative renewable transportation fuel and power. 

With a decade’s worth of novel experience in carbon-negative fuel development, operations, service, and marketing, Amp Americas delivers turn-key solutions that address greenhouse gas emissions resulting in improved air, land, and water quality.

The company’s operations eliminate more than 400,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions per year, comparable to taking 87,000 cars off the road for a full year. This work has gained the company the first dairy waste-to-vehicle fuel pathway certification by California’s Air Resources Board (CARB).

“We have an agile structure and proven ability to finance, build, own, operate, market, and deliver renewable energy projects—all under one roof,” said Grant Zimmerman, CEO, Amp Americas.

With the technology and experience to execute it, Amp Americas has now made a major move toward scale, announcing two acquisitions that have tripled its carbon-negative fuels portfolio.

The first expanded its partnership with Generate Capital. Under the terms of the deal, Amp Americas consolidated Generate Capital’s flagship dairy RNG project assets in Indiana into its portfolio with Generate investing in the corporate equity of Amp Americas.

The management team of Amp Americas began the development of the Indiana projects in 2012, and has operated and managed them on behalf of Generate since June 2019. These works consist of five digesters and two gas processing plants that capture methane from approximately 1.5 million gallons per day of dairy waste generated by 36,000 cows across nine dairies. This gas, which would otherwise enter the atmosphere, is purified and compressed into carbon-negative renewable transportation fuel.

“Amp Americas has been a valued decarbonization partner for Generate over the last several years and we are excited to deepen our relationship with Amp Americas through our investment in the company,” said John Dannan, managing director, Generate Capital. “Amp Americas’ scale and expertise are an attractive model for reducing methane pollution and expanding the RNG market, and we are looking forward to supporting the company’s growth in the years to come.”

Amp Americas also acquired a group of Idaho-based RMG project assets from Vitol Green Holdings that consist of three digesters at two gas processing plants, and one electric power generation plant that captures methane from more than 940,000 gallons of dairy waste per day generated by 36,000 cows across two dairies. The gas captured at this site is then processed into carbon-negative renewable transportation fuel and power.

Finding the Value 

Driven by climbing demand for renewable energy sources, the need to diversify their businesses, and the desire to tap into certain federal tax credits, biodigesters turning livestock manure into natural gas on U.S. farms increased from 24 in 2000 to 255 today, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

And although methane from cow manure accounts for five percent of the total methane given off by the animal (95 percent is burped out as it digests), and agriculture accounts for 10 percent of the greenhouse gasses emitted in the U.S., turning cow manure into natural gas remains a reliable method of working toward carbon neutrality, and can reduce greenhouse gasses generated from a dairy farm by 35 percent when biogas replaces traditional electricity, according to a study co-written by Rebecca Larson, associate professor of biological systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin.

At one point these factors attracted Equilibrium Capital, which in partnership with Threemile Canyon Farms, developed one of the largest dairy manure to RNG facilities in the U.S. in Boardman, Oregon, which it then sold to Resilient Infrastructure Group in February of this year.

While Equilibrium worked on developing cow manure-to-RNG technology on the West Coast, on the U.S. East Coast, in Massachusetts, a group of five farmers and energy consultant Bill Jorgenson launched AGreen Energy LLC on five farms. By 2014 Vanguard Renewables set its sights on the operation, and merged with the business, raising $72 million to expand its farm network across New England.

This in turn attracted Dominion Energy, which joined Vanguard along with an investment of $200 million in the business, expanding the company’s network into Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Georgia.

With these two newest acquisitions, Amp Americas has shifted to a leadership position in the space, now operating seven of the largest dairy biogas-to-transportation fuel projects in the U.S., producing fuel from dairy waste generated by more than 100,000 cows across 20 dairies.

“Amp Americas has a long history of developing and operating on-farm dairy RNG projects,” said David Finan, partner, EIV Capital, LLC. “From addressing the financial complexities of RNG development to understanding the nuances of compliance and regulatory work and creating environmental and economic opportunities for farmers and their communities, Amp Americas has demonstrated unique expertise and an ability to positively impact the industry and our planet. We are proud to partner with the company in its efforts.”

– Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Oilseed & Grain News. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.