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Media Coverage Highlights Vanguard Renewables wins award for anaerobic digester project

STHE PROJECT WILL GENERATE BIOGAS FROM MANURE AND FOOD WASTE AND CONVERT IT TO PIPELINE- QUALITY GAS FOR USE BY MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE IN MIDDLEBURY, VERMONT. NOVEMBER 5, 2019 | POSTED BY ADAM REDLING

Vanguard Renewables, Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, and system that recycles organic material and produces renewable Vermont Gas (VGS), South Burlington, Vermont, announced energy,” American Biogas Council Executive Director Patrick that they received the 2019 American Biogas Council Up-and- Serfass says. “We want to celebrate this cooperation and vision Coming Biogas Project award for their work on the Goodrich and hope others will replicate it.” Farm anaerobic digester project in Salisbury, Vermont. The Construction on the farm-powered anaerobic digester will be American Biogas Council made the announcement at the completed in 2020. Renewable natural gas produced there will organization’s awards ceremony Oct. 29. travel by pipeline to Middlebury College’s main powerplant The Goodrich Farm anaerobic digester project is a unique and will supply about half of the energy that Middlebury uses partnership between Vanguard Renewables, VGS, Middlebury for heating and cooling. Vanguard Renewables will build, College and the Goodrich family, which owns and operates the own and operate the digester, which will process 100 tons of farm. According to the companies, the project will generate manure and 180 tons of organic food waste daily into RNG. biogas from manure and food waste and convert it to pipeline- At the awards, Vanguard also received the 2019 Longevity quality gas for use by Middlebury College in Middlebury, Award for its anaerobic digester facility at Jordan Dairy Farms Vermont, and VGS’s customers. in Rutland, Massachusetts. This award recognizes a project “Even though this project just began construction, it is already in operation for five years or longer. Jordan Dairy Farms was groundbreaking in many ways. Incredible things can be done the first dairy in Massachusetts to use anaerobic digester when a university, utility and industry come together with a technology to blend farm manure and food waste to produce common commitment to protect our environment with a biogas renewable power. The digester system has been in operation since 2011.

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com (Continued)

“We are so honored to work with farms across the United States— from the early days of biogas production, through the industry’s rapid growth, to this exemplary partnership with VGS,” John Hanselman, Vanguard Renewables chairman and CEO, says. “It’s amazing to be recognized for our latest project at Goodrich Family Farm in Salisbury, Vermont, and to receive the 2019 Longevity Award for our legacy digester facility at Jordan Dairy Farms in Rutland, Massachusetts, on the same night.” “VGS is the first local distribution company in the country to offer customers retail renewable natural gas service. The digester in Salisbury will bring a local source of RNG to our customers and a host of environmental benefits to the communities we serve and to our state,” Don Rendall, president and CEO of VGS, says. “Our commitment to reduce carbon and cost through our award-winning efficiency services [and] innovative programs such as the Salisbury digester is unwavering. This is the next logical step in our work toward a cleaner energy future and meeting our state’s ambitious carbon reduction goals, and we are proud to be a part of it.” The Goodrich Farm digester is expected to produce 180,000 mcf per year. Located on more than 2,400 acres, the Goodrich Family Farm is a generational dairy farm with 900 milking cows. It is a member of the Agri-Mark Cabot Creamery Cooperative, headquartered in Waitsfield, Vermont.

“Our family is excited to see this project transition from a dream into a reality,” Chase Goodrich, a fourth- generation owner of the Goodrich Family Farm, says. “We want to express our thanks to our wonderful partners, as well as countless others who helped us accomplish this goal.”

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Bioenergy agricultural waste

Food waste delivery at a Vanguard Renewables Farm Powered anaerobic digester project at Bar-Way Farm, Deerfield , MA

John Hanselman of Vanguard Renewables discusses the latest updates on what will be the largest AD facility of its kind in New England Moo-ving swiftly – updates on a farm waste AD project in New England gricultural waste Can you tell our readers has huge potential about yourself and your role in the biogas at Vanguard Renewables? sector. One of the I am John Hanselman, latest projects in chairman and CEO of the US utilising farm waste Vanguard Renewables. My isA collaboration between business partner, Kevin Chase, organics to energy company, Vanguard’s chief investment a local farm, a local college officer, and I founded and a clean energy firm. Vanguard Renewables in 2014 Once completed in 2020, to make food waste recycling the anaerobic digestion to renewable energy a facility will be the largest thriving business. As a rapidly of its kind in New England. growing business, we wear The AD facility at Goodrich many hats, but I focus on the Farm in Vermont will convert food waste and operations manure and dairy factory food part of the business and Kevin waste into energy. The farm is focuses on the farm and home to 900 milking cows, and development and construction will soon become the state’s side of the business. first local source of pipeline- Vanguard Renewables ready methane or natural gas. develops, constructs, owns, On 20 August, all four and operates farm-based companies gathered at the clean energy systems. site on Goodrich Farm in Our facilities recycle food Vermont to celebrate the waste and farm waste to ground breaking for the produce safe and reliable new facility. Bioenergy renewable natural gas (RNG) Insight caught up with John or renewable electricity (RE). Hanselman of Vanguard Vanguard’s Farm Powered® Renewables for an update portfolio of anaerobic on the project. digesters represent the John Hanselman at Goodrich Farm, Salisbury, VT groundbreaking

Bioenergy agricultural waste xx • November/December 2019 Bioenergy Insight

Food waste delivery at a Vanguard Renewables Farm Powered anaerobic digester project at Bar-Way Farm, Deerfield , MA

digester project will sequester 100% of the manure from the farm. This will reduce odour and produce a high-grade fertiliser that the farm will receive for free. This digestate fertiliser reduces the farm’s dependence on synthetic fertiliser and reduces the farm’s daily operating costs.

How important is utilising dairy or other agricultural waste in the effort to reduce carbon emissions globally? There is a huge synergy in placing anaerobic digesters on farms. Animal manure is both a GHG contributor as well as an odour problem for the community. By taking 100% of the farm manure we are removing both those threats. In addition, the post- process liquid digestate is a Goodrich Farm anaerobic digester project, Salisbury, VT. Project under construction high-nutrient fertiliser that can dramatically reduce the largest organics recycling and capabilities to impact positively embraced by the farms reliance on synthetic destination in north-eastern carbon reduction and increase regulators and neighbours. fertiliser and the carbon costs US, processing nearly environmental stewardship. of producing that fertiliser and 200,000 tonnes per year The parties involved had a How much methane or natural transporting it to the farm. of combined on-farm and clear goal of demonstrating gas will be produced through this off-farm organics. We have how the farm could be used project, and how many homes What does the future hold for AD? single stream and co-digestion as an instrument to greatly or businesses will it power? The beneficial impact of AD facilities in development reduce the GHG emissions The project will produce has only just started to be across multiple states. of the Middlebury College approximately 180,000mcf understood by regulators, Vanguard was named 2018 campus and reduce the entire per year or roughly enough food manufacturers, and Organics Recycler of the State of Vermont’s food waste to power 3,000 homes. communities. I think that in 10 Year by the National Waste challenge. Vanguard designed years there will be thousands & Recycling Association. a solution on the farm that Aside from renewable gas, of digesters built in the US. l fulfilled each of the different what will be the key benefits needs and aspirations of the When did plans for the new of this AD facility? For more information: anaerobic digestion plant in project partners, while being The Farm Powered anaerobic Visit: www.vanguardrenewables.com Vermont start to take shape? About three years ago, the farm owners, the Goodrich family, came to us and asked us to pick where another development group had run into some serious roadblocks. We worked with all parties to get the anaerobic digester project redesigned so that it would work for the family and for the major stakeholders: The State of Vermont, Middlebury College and Vermont Gas.

How did the partnership with Goodrich Farm, Middlebury College and Vermont Gas materialise? All three parties where focused on how they could combine their specific talents Aerial of Goodrich Farm, Salisbury, VT

BioenergyVanguard Insight Renewables | Media Coverage November/Decembervanguardrenewables.com 2019 • xx Farmers Are Using Food Waste To Make Electricity DECEMBER 1, 2019 ALLISON AUBREY, NPR

Dairy farmers in Massachusetts are using food waste to create electricity. They feed waste into anaerobic digesters, built and operated by Vanguard Renewables, which capture the methane emissions and make renewable energy.

The process begins by gathering wasted food from around the state, including from many Whole Foods locations. We visited the chain’s store in Shrewsbury, Mass., which has installed a Grind2Energy system. It’s an industrial-strength grinder that gobbles up all the scraps of food the store can’t sell, explains Karen Franczyk, who is the sustainability program manager for Whole Foods’ North Atlantic region.

The machine will grind up all kinds of food waste — “everything from bones, we put whole fish in here, to vegetables to dry items like rice or grains,” Franczyk says as the grinder is loaded. It also takes frying fats and greases.

While Whole Foods donates a lot of surplus food to food banks, there’s a lot waste left over. Much of it is generated from prepping prepared foods. Just as when you cook in your own kitchen, there are lots of bits that remain, such as onion or carrot peel, rinds, stalks or meat scraps. The grinder turns all these bits into a slurry. “It really becomes kind of a liquefied food waste,” Franczyk says.

From here, the waste is loaded into a truck and sent to an anaerobic digester. “There’s no question it’s better than putting it in the trash,” Franczyk says. She says the chain is committed to diverting as much waste as possible and aims for zero waste. In addition to food donations, Whole Foods composts; this waste-to-energy system is yet another way to meet its goal. “We really do like the system,” she says.

We visited Bar-Way Farm, Inc. in Deerfield, Mass. Owner Peter Melnik, a fourth-generation dairy farmer, showed us how his anaerobic digester, which is installed next to his dairy barn, works.”We presently take in about a 100 tons [of waste], which is about three tractor-trailer loads, every day,” Melnik says.

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Dominion Energy, Vanguard Renewables partner on dairy RNG BY DOMINION ENERGY | DECEMBER 11, 2019

A Vanguard Renewables Farm Powered anaerobic digester at a farm in Deerfield, Mass. Vanguard will build and operate dairy-based digesters as part of a strategic partnership with Dominion Energy. PHOTO: Business Wire “Our multi-year alliance with Dairy Farmers of America Dominion Energy and Vanguard Renewables announced today demonstrates Vanguard Renewables’ commitment to working with a more than $200 million, nationwide strategic partnership to the dairy community to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and convert methane from U.S. dairy farms into clean, renewable enhance long-term operational and economic benefits for family natural gas (RNG) that can heat homes, power businesses and fuel farmers. For the first time, dairies across the country have partners vehicles. Multiple projects are under development in Georgia, with substantial financial resources and a deep understanding of Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah with additional projects the dairy industry working alongside them to take action now to planned nationwide. Under the strategic partnership, Dominion solve these challenges,” said Kevin Chase, co-founder and chief Energy will own the projects and market the RNG, and Vanguard investment officer of Vanguard Renewables and CEO of Vanguard Renewables’ subsidiary Clean Energy Investment USA dba Renewables Ag. “This strategic partnership with Dominion Vanguard Renewables Ag will design, develop and operate the Energy and DFA will have a meaningful impact on greenhouse projects. gas sequestration and dairy waste-to-energy production that will significantly benefit the farm community and the environment.” “Through our strategic partnership with Vanguard Renewables and our strategic alliance with Dairy Farmers of America, we’re rapidly Vanguard Renewables is the national leader in the development accelerating the development of these transformational projects of food and dairy waste-to-energy projects. Vanguard Renewables and for the first time on a nationwide scale,” said Diane Leopold, Ag focuses on the development and operation of dairy waste-to- Dominion Energy’s co-chief operating officer. “The environmental, energy projects that improve manure and nutrient management consumer and agricultural benefits of these projects are truly and produce clean energy. Host farmers receive a new income groundbreaking,” Leopold continued. “We’re substantially reducing stream and can remain focused on farm operations while Vanguard greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. dairy farms, delivering new professionally develops and operates the on-farm facilities. sources of clean energy to U.S. consumers and providing a new source of long-term revenue for family farmers across the country.” “As the leading dairy cooperative in the U.S., we have a long- standing commitment to help family farmer-owners solve Dominion Energy is a national leader in clean energy, with the challenges,” said David Darr, senior vice president and chief fourth largest U.S. solar fleet and the largest offshore wind project strategy and sustainability officer of Dairy Farmers of America. in the U.S. under development along the coast of Virginia. The “Our strategic alliance with Vanguard Renewables and Dominion company has joined forces with Smithfield Foods to form the Energy provides a meaningful solution to the greenhouse gas largest agricultural-based renewable natural gas partnership in emissions challenge we face, supports stewardship of the land, and the U.S., with $500 million committed over 10 years to convert enhances the long-term economic viability for farms across the methane from U.S. hog farms into clean energy for local consumers. U.S.,” Darr continued. “This is a win-win for the dairy farmers and for the environment.” Methane is produced from a variety of natural sources, including dairy, hog and food waste. When released into the atmosphere, A typical dairy waste-to-energy project consists of a cluster of methane emits approximately 25 times more greenhouse gases multiple farms totaling 20,000 to 30,000 dairy cows. The methane than carbon dioxide. By capturing methane from U.S. dairy farms produced from dairy manure is captured through a process known and converting it into RNG, Dominion Energy’s and Vanguard as Farm Powered® anaerobic digestion and is then transported Renewables’ strategic partnership will reduce annual CO2 through low-pressure gathering lines to a central conditioning equivalent emissions by more than 450,000 metric tons, the same as facility. Once the gas is processed and cleaned of any impurities, taking nearly 100,000 cars off the road or planting 7.5 million new it is then delivered to local consumers through the existing trees each year. underground distribution network.

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This September 2019 image provided by Vanguard Renewables shows a Farm Powered anaerobic digester facility in Deerfield, Mass. Dominion Energy is launching a $200 million effort to convert methane from cow manure into natural gas. (Chris Spencer/Vanguard Renewables via AP) Dominion Energy partnership to convert manure to natural gas DECEMBER 11, 2019 | AP

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — One of the nation’s largest energy producers is launching a $200 million effort to convert methane from cow manure into natural gas. Richmond-based Dominion Energy announced Wednesday that it is partnering with Vanguard Renewables to develop and operate conversion facilities at dairy farms across the U.S.

A news release says projects are under development in Georgia, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. A subsidiary of Massachusetts-based Vanguard Renewables will design, develop and operate the projects. Dominion will own the projects and market the gas. Company spokesman Aaron Ruby says the $200 million will be invested over five years, with the potential for the effort to expand. Dominion has a similar partnership with Smithfield Foods to convert methane from hog farms into natural gas. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Dominion estimates the project will reduce emissions by an amount comparable to taking nearly 100,000 cars off the road for a year. Each project will involve a cluster of several farms. The methane is captured and transported through low- pressure lines to a conditioning facility, where is it processes and cleaned, then delivered to consumers. The project comes at a difficult time for dairy farms, which are facing a persistent decline in U.S. milk consumption. Participating farms will receive annual lease payments and compensation for the manure.

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Dominion Energy Turns to CowManure in Gas Pact

DECEMBER 12, 2019 | BY RYAN DEZEMBER

The advent of markets for carbon offset credits—and the urgency with which investors and governments are pushing companies to reduce or counter their greenhouse-gas emissions—has increased the appeal of biogas. Demand is growing even though it often costs many times more than gas produced by drillers, which is about $2.25 per million British thermal units lately. Methane, which cattle produce in abundance thanks to their multichambered stomachs, is a particularly potent greenhouse gas. The methane from the manure of a typical cow is roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of a car that gets about 20 miles a gallon and is driven 12,000 miles. “It’s an entire strategy on how we’re approaching sustainability and greenhouse-gas reductions,” said Diane Leopold, co-chief operating officer at Dominion. “We’re looking to be a leader in Vanguard Renewables will build digesters, which break down waste into fuel and fertilizer, in a pact with Dominion Energy and the Dairy Farmers of America. A clean energy.” digester at a farm in Deerfield, Mass. The anaerobic digesters are to be built over the next five years Dominion Energy Inc. struck a $200 million pact with a renewable around clusters of dairy farms in Georgia, Nevada, Colorado, energy producer and the Dairy Farmers of America Inc. to extract New Mexico and Utah. Each digester needs the manure of natural gas from cow manure. 20,000 to 30,000 cattle to be economical, said Ryan Childress, director of gas business development at the utility. Dominion The arrangement calls for the utility to fund construction of organic- expects the facilities to produce 1 billion cubic feet of gas waste processing facilities called anaerobic digesters amid clusters annually. Though just a sliver of total U.S. output, that is still of large dairy farms, connect the facilities to natural gas distribution enough to power thousands of homes. pipelines and sell the gas. Vanguard Renewables has built five digesters in Massachusetts, Vanguard Renewables, of Wellesley, Mass., will build and operate is building one in Vermont and is in the permitting stage for the digesters, which break down organic waste into usable fuel and another in New York. The gas has been sold to companies as well fertilizer. Dairy farmers, for a fee, will supply manure, and in some as a city and a Vermont college. Kevin Chase, Vanguard’s chief cases lease out land upon which the equipment will be built. investment officer, said the company found a receptive audience It is the latest venture between big livestock concerns and power among dairy farmers as it sought participants for the Dominion producers aiming to generate pipeline-quality natural gas from animal venture. waste. Doing so results in gas that is more expensive than that which “A lot of the dairies that we’re talking to are going through has flooded the market from U.S. shale formations. Socalled biogas, succession plans and the younger dairymen coming through are however, is in high demand among consumers, businesses and local all about being good stewards of the environment,” Mr. Chase said. governments eager to lower their emissions and earn environmental “They’re also looking at ways to diversify their balance sheet.” plaudits. It can generate valuable and tradable carbon offset credits for buyers, which can make producing biogas worthwhile for companies Most digesters on dairies have been built and operated by like Dominion. farmers, which had limited appeal among Dairy Farmers of America’s roughly 8,000 farm owners for the expense The utility, which serves 7.5 million customers in 18 states with and operational complexity involved, said David Darr, the electricity or natural gas, in October enlarged to $500 million an existing cooperative’s chief strategy and sustainability officer. The deal to capture gas at Smithfield Foods Inc. hog farms in five states. Last prospect of having third parties handle gas production and sales month, Perdue Farms Inc. and a Maryland renewable energy company while earning fees for the manure is more enticing, he said. Plus, said they were building a digester in Delaware to break down fat, sludge the farmers get their manure back once the methane is gone so and offal from poultry slaughterhouses into gas. that they can fertilize with it. Twelve years ago, the cutting edge of utilities’ efforts to reduce “You still have access to those nutrients for cropping operations,” emissions involved stretching tarps over manure lagoons to trap he said. “This is just to have an additional harvest, to capture the methane fumes so they could be funneled to a flare and burned that methane that would otherwise just be emitted into the instead of just wafting to the clouds. environment.”

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com DEC 16, 2019 | WASTE360 STAFF

Dominion, Vanguard Develop Nationwide Network of WTE Projects

THE $200 MILLION STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP WILL CAPTURE METHANE FROM U.S. DAIRY FARMS AND CONVERT IT INTO CLEAN, RENEWABLE ENERGY FOR U.S. CONSUMERS.

Dominion Energy and Vanguard Renewables announced a more and enhance long-term operational and economic benefits for than $200 million, nationwide strategic partnership to convert family farmers. For the first time, dairies across the country methane from U.S. dairy farms into clean, renewable natural gas have partners with substantial financial resources and a deep (RNG) that can heat homes, power businesses and fuel vehicles. understanding of the dairy industry working alongside them Multiple projects are under development in Georgia, Nevada, to take action now to solve these challenges,” said Kevin Chase, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah with additional projects planned co-founder and chief investment officer of Vanguard Renewables nationwide. and CEO of Vanguard Renewables Ag, in a statement. “This Under the strategic partnership, Dominion Energy will own strategic partnership with Dominion Energy and DFA will have the projects and market the RNG, and Vanguard Renewables’ a meaningful impact on greenhouse gas sequestration and dairy subsidiary Clean Energy Investment USA dba Vanguard waste-to-energy production that will significantly benefit the Renewables Ag will design, develop and operate the projects. farm community and the environment.” “Through our strategic partnership with Vanguard Renewables and Vanguard Renewables Ag focuses on the development and our strategic alliance with Dairy Farmers of America, we’re rapidly operation of dairy waste-to-energy projects that improve manure accelerating the development of these transformational projects and nutrient management and produce clean energy. and for the first time on a nationwide scale,” said Diane Leopold, “As the leading dairy cooperative in the U.S., we have a long- Dominion Energy’s co-chief operating officer, in a statement. standing commitment to help family farmer owners solve challenges,” said David Darr, senior vice president and chief “The environmental, consumer and agricultural strategy and sustainability officer of Dairy Farmers of America, benefits of these projects are truly groundbreaking. We’re in a statement. “Our strategic alliance with Vanguard Renewables substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions from and Dominion Energy provides a meaningful solution to U.S. dairy farms, delivering new sources of clean energy to the greenhouse gas emissions challenge we face, supports U.S. consumers and providing a new source of long-term stewardship of the land and enhances the long-term economic revenue for family farmers across the country.” viability for farms across the U.S. This is a win-win for the dairy farmers and for the environment.” Methane is produced from a variety of natural sources, including A typical dairy waste-to-energy project consists of a cluster dairy, hog and food waste. When released into the atmosphere, of multiple farms totaling 20,000 to 30,000 dairy cows. The methane emits approximately 25 times more greenhouse gases methane produced from dairy manure is captured through a than carbon dioxide. By capturing methane from U.S. dairy farms process known as farm-powered anaerobic digestion and is then and converting it into RNG, Dominion Energy’s and Vanguard transported through low-pressure gathering lines to a central Renewables’ partnership will reduce annual CO2 equivalent conditioning facility. Once the gas is processed and cleaned of emissions by more than 450,000 metric tons, the same as taking any impurities, it is then delivered to local consumers through nearly 100,000 cars off the road or planting 7.5 million new trees the existing underground distribution network. each year.

“Our multiyear alliance with Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) demonstrates Vanguard Renewables’ commitment to working with the dairy community to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Dominion Energy and Vanguard Renewables form partnership to develop first nationwide network of dairy waste- to-energy projects

UNDER THE PARTNERSHIP, THE COMPANIES WILL CONVERT METHANE FROM U.S. DAIRY FARMS INTO CLEAN, RENEWABLE NATURAL GAS (RNG) THAT CAN HEAT HOMES, POWER BUSINESSES AND FUEL VEHICLES. DECEMBER 16, 2019 | POSTED BY ADAM REDLING

Dominion Energy, Richmond, Virginia, and Vanguard Renewables, emissions by more than 450,000 metric tons, the same as taking Wellesley, Massachusetts, announced a more than $200 million nearly 100,000 cars off the road or planting 7.5 million new trees nationwide partnership to convert methane from U.S. dairy farms each year, the companies say. into clean, renewable natural gas (RNG) that can heat homes, power “Our multiyear alliance with Dairy Farmers of America businesses and fuel vehicles. demonstrates Vanguard Renewables’ commitment to working Multiple projects are under development in Georgia, Nevada, with the dairy community to reduce greenhouse gas emissions Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, with additional projects planned and enhance long-term operational and economic benefits for nationwide. Under the strategic partnership, Dominion Energy will family farmers. For the first time, dairies across the country own the projects and market the RNG, and Vanguard Renewables’ have partners with substantial financial resources and a deep subsidiary—Clean Energy Investment USA dba Vanguard Renewables understanding of the dairy industry working alongside them Ag—will design, develop and operate the projects. to take action now to solve these challenges,” Kevin Chase, co-founder and CIO of Vanguard Renewables and CEO of “Through our strategic partnership with Vanguard Renewables and Vanguard Renewables Ag, says. “This strategic partnership our strategic alliance with Dairy Farmers of America, we’re rapidly with Dominion Energy and DFA will have a meaningful impact accelerating the development of these transformational projects and on greenhouse gas sequestration and dairy waste-to-energy [expanding them] for the first time on a nationwide scale,” Diane production that will significantly benefit the farm community Leopold, co-chief operating officer at Dominion Energy, says. “The and the environment.” environmental, consumer and agricultural benefits of these projects are truly groundbreaking.” “As the leading dairy cooperative in the U.S., we have a long- standing commitment to help family farmer-owners solve “We’re substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. challenges,” David Darr, senior vice president and chief strategy dairy farms, delivering new sources of clean energy to U.S. consumers and sustainability officer of Dairy Farmers of America, says. “Our and providing a new source of long-term revenue for family farmers strategic alliance with Vanguard Renewables and Dominion across the country,” Leopold continues. Energy provides a meaningful solution to the greenhouse gas Methane is produced from a variety of natural sources, including emissions challenge we face, supports stewardship of the land, dairy, hog and food waste. When released into the atmosphere, and enhances the long-term economic viability for farms across methane emits approximately 25 times more greenhouse gases the U.S.” than carbon dioxide. By capturing methane from U.S. dairy farms “This is a win-win for the dairy farmers and for the environment,” and converting it into RNG, Dominion Energy’s and Vanguard Darr concludes. Renewables’ strategic partnership will reduce annual CO2 equivalent

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Dominion Energy and Vanguard Renewables Form Strategic Partnership to Develop Nationwide Network of Dairy Waste-to-Energy Projects

DECEMBER 17, 2019 | INDUSTRY BUZZ

• More than $200 million delivering new sources of clean energy to U.S. consumers strategic partnership and providing a new source of long-term revenue for will capture methane family farmers across the country.” from U.S. dairy farms Dominion Energy is a national leader in clean energy, and convert it into clean, renewable energy for U.S. with the fourth largest U.S. solar fleet and the largest consumers offshore wind project in the U.S. under development • Strategic partnership will substantially reduce greenhouse along the coast of Virginia. The company has joined forces gas emissions from U.S. dairy farms, equivalent to taking with Smithfield Foods to form the largest agricultural- nearly 100,000 cars off the road or planting 7.5 million based renewable natural gas partnership in the U.S., new trees each year with $500 million committed over 10 years to convert methane from U.S. hog farms into clean energy for local • Companies expand strategic alliance with Dairy Farmers consumers. of America to promote greenhouse gas reduction and improve economic viability of family-owned dairy farms Methane is produced from a variety of natural sources, including dairy, hog and food waste. When released into • Strategic partnership builds on Dominion Energy’s leading the atmosphere, methane emits approximately 25 times hog waste-to-energy partnership with Smithfield Foods more greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. By capturing and Vanguard Renewables’ leadership in dairy and food methane from U.S. dairy farms and converting it into waste-to-energy projects RNG, Dominion Energy’s and Vanguard Renewables’ Dominion Energy and Vanguard Renewables announced strategic partnership will reduce annual CO2 equivalent today a more than $200 million, nationwide strategic emissions by more than 450,000 metric tons, the same partnership to convert methane from U.S. dairy farms into as taking nearly 100,000 cars off the road or planting 7.5 clean, renewable natural gas (RNG) that can heat homes, million new trees each year. power businesses and fuel vehicles. Multiple projects “Our multi-year alliance with Dairy Farmers of America are under development in Georgia, Nevada, Colorado, demonstrates Vanguard Renewables’ commitment to New Mexico, and Utah with additional projects planned working with the dairy community to reduce greenhouse nationwide. Under the strategic partnership, Dominion gas emissions and enhance long-term operational and Energy will own the projects and market the RNG, and economic benefits for family farmers. For the first time, Vanguard Renewables’ subsidiary Clean Energy Investment dairies across the country have partners with substantial USA dba Vanguard Renewables Ag will design, develop and financial resources and a deep understanding of the dairy operate the projects. industry working alongside them to take action now to “Through our strategic partnership with Vanguard solve these challenges,” said Kevin Chase, Co-Founder Renewables and our strategic alliance with Dairy Farmers and Chief Investment Officer of Vanguard Renewables of America, we’re rapidly accelerating the development and Chief Executive Officer of Vanguard Renewables Ag. of these transformational projects and for the first time “This strategic partnership with Dominion Energy and on a nationwide scale,” said Diane Leopold, Dominion DFA will have a meaningful impact on greenhouse gas Energy’s Co-Chief Operating Officer. “The environmental, sequestration and dairy waste-to-energy production that consumer and agricultural benefits of these projects are truly will significantly benefit the farm community and the groundbreaking,” Leopold continued. “We’re substantially environment.” reducing greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. dairy farms,

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com (Continued)

Vanguard Renewables is the national leader in the About Vanguard Renewables development of food and dairy waste-to-energy projects. Vanguard Renewables Ag focuses on the development and Vanguard Renewables operation of dairy waste-to-energy projects that improve is the U.S. leader in manure and nutrient management and produce clean farm-based anaerobic energy. Host farmers receive a new income stream and digestion. The can remain focused on farm operations while Vanguard Company has a multi-year strategic alliance with Dairy professionally develops and operates the on-farm facilities. Farmers of America (DFA), the largest dairy cooperative in the U.S. with more than 14,000 dairy-farmer members “As the leading dairy cooperative in the U.S., we have a across 48 states. The Company’s subsidiary Clean long-standing commitment to help family farmer-owners Energy Investment USA dba Vanguard Renewables Ag solve challenges,” said David Darr, Senior Vice President focuses on the manure-only to RNG business. Through and Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer of Dairy a new partnership with Dominion Energy and DFA, Farmers of America. “Our strategic alliance with Vanguard Vanguard Renewables Ag will develop and operate Renewables and Dominion Energy provides a meaningful dairy-manure to RNG facilities across the U.S. These solution to the greenhouse gas emissions challenge we face, Farm Powered® manure-only anaerobic digesters (AD) supports stewardship of the land, and enhances the long- improve manure and nutrient management, produce term economic viability for farms across the U.S.,” Darr clean energy, and provide farms with a new, diversified continued. “This is a win-win for the dairy farmers and for income stream. Vanguard Renewables develops, owns, the environment.” and operates farm-based co-digestion facilities that A typical dairy waste-to-energy project consists of a cluster combine farm manure and unwanted food to produce of multiple farms totaling 20,000 to 30,000 dairy cows. The Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) or Renewable Electricity methane produced from dairy manure is captured through (RE) and is the largest organics recycling destination a process known as Farm Powered® anaerobic digestion and in the Northeast. Vanguard Renewables won the 2019 is then transported through low-pressure gathering lines American Biogas Council Up-and-Coming Project Award to a central conditioning facility. Once the gas is processed for its AD facility in Salisbury, Vt. and the 2019 American and cleaned of any impurities, it is then delivered to local Biogas Council Longevity Award for its Rutland, Ma. AD consumers through the existing underground distribution facility. Vanguard’s Hadley, Ma. digester project won 2016 network. ABC Project of the Year honors. Vanguard Renewables’ leadership in on-farm co-digestion of food waste and farm About Dominion Energy waste to renewable energy won the company 2018 Organics Recycler of the Year honors from the National Waste & Nearly 7.5 million customers in 18 states energize their Recycling Association. Visit vanguardrenewables.com to homes and businesses with electricity or natural gas from learn more. Dominion Energy (NYSE: D), headquartered in Richmond, Va. The company is committed to sustainable, reliable, About Dairy Farmers of America affordable and safe energy and is one of the nation’s largest producers and transporters of energy with more than $100 Dairy Farmers of America billion of assets providing electric generation, transmission (DFA) is a national dairy and distribution, as well as natural gas storage, transmission, marketing cooperative distribution and import/export services. The company with more than 14,000 expects to cut generating fleet carbon dioxide emissions 55 members on more than 8,000 farms in 48 states. DFA percent by 2030 and reduce methane emissions from its gas farmer-owners are committed to responsible farming and assets 50 percent by 2030. Please visit DominionEnergy.com environmental sustainability. Alongside being one of the to learn more. country’s most diversified manufacturers of dairy products, food components and ingredients, DFA and its member farms are focused on developing innovative farming and manufacturing solutions that enhance food safety and support the communities in which they operate. For more information visit www.dfamilk.com.

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com DECEMBER 18, 2019 EDITOR DAVE NATZKE Weekly Digest: Partnership developing nationwide network of dairy waste-to-energy projects

PARTNERSHIP DEVELOPING NATIONWIDE NETWORK OF DAIRY WASTE-TO-ENERGY PROJECTS

An expansion of an alliance involving Dairy Farmers of America • October sales of conventional products totaled 3.81 billion (DFA) is designed to reduce on-farm greenhouse gas emissions while pounds, down 2.2% from the previous year. Year-to-date sales improving the economic viability of family-owned dairy farms. totaled 36.11 billion pounds, down 1.7%. In the conventional category, October sales of whole milk were up 0.4%, at Under the new partnership, Vanguard Renewables Ag will design, 1.29 billion pounds; year-to-date sales totaled 12.49 billion develop and operate dairy farm anaerobic digestion/methane pounds, up 0.9%. Sales of flavored whole milk were up 13.4% capture projects, and Dominion Energy will own the projects and in October and up 8.9% year-to-date. market the renewable natural gas (RNG). • October sales of organic products, at 230 million pounds, The agreement, announced Dec. 11, builds on an alliance formed in were up 0.9% from a year earlier. Year-to-date, organic sales 2017, when DFA, the nation’s largest dairy cooperative, partnered totaled 2.11 billion pounds, down 2.2%. Organic sales were with Massachusetts-based Vanguard Renewables to help bring led by whole milk, up 11% from last October and 4.4% year- anaerobic digestion technology to more dairy farms across the to-date. Organic products represented nearly 5.7% of total country. Under that arrangement, Vanguard develops and operates sales in October and about 5.5% year-to-date. the on-farm facilities, and participating farmers receive a new income stream. The U.S. figures represent consumption of fluid milk products in Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) areas and According to a press release, a typical dairy waste-to-energy project California (now a part of the FMMO system), which account will consist of a cluster of multiple farms totaling 20,000 to 30,000 for approximately 92% of total fluid milk sales in the U.S. Sales dairy cows. The methane produced from dairy manure is captured outlets include food stores, convenience stores, warehouse through anaerobic digestion and transported through low-pressure stores/wholesale clubs, non-food stores, schools, the foodservice gathering lines to a central conditioning facility. Once the gas is industry and home delivery. processed and cleaned of any impurities, it is then delivered to local consumers through the existing underground distribution While fluid milk sales were down, commercial use of other dairy network. products was up, according to the USDA’s Economic Research Service. Compared to October a year earlier, American cheese Multiple projects are already under development in Georgia, consumption rose 26.1 million pounds (5.9%), pushing total Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, with additional projects cheese consumption up 0.2%, to 1.134 billion pounds. Butter planned nationwide. consumption saw a 4.1% increase, to 212.7 million pounds. Dry Dominion Energy is headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, and whey consumption was up 14.7% year-to-date, and 68% from serves about 7.5 million customers in 18 states. In addition to solar the prior year. Nonfat dry milk and skim milk powder also saw and wind power projects, it has also joined forces with Smithfield strong increases in consumption, up 18.3% from the previous Foods to form the largest agricultural-based renewable natural gas year and 12.8% year-to-date. partnership in the U.S., converting methane from U.S. hog farms into clean energy. USDA buys fluid milk October fluid sales volume down, but other The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) awarded products higher multiple bids for the delivery of fluid milk for distribution through domestic feeding programs. In three separate October fluid milk sales volume totaled just over 4 billion pounds, announcements, bids totaled: according to the USDA’s Dairy Market News. • 4.36 million units of 1%, 2% and whole milk in half-gallon • Overall October 2019 sales of packaged conventional and and gallon containers, scheduled for delivery between Jan. organic fluid milk totaled 4.04 billion pounds, down 2.1% 6 and April 1, 2020. Prices ranged from $1.27-$2.74 for half compared to a year earlier. January-October 2019 sales were gallons and $2.34-$4.16 for gallons. Bids were accepted from estimated at 38.22 billion pounds, down 1.8%. Anderson Erickson Dairy, Borden Dairy, Dairy Farmers of

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com (Continued)

America, Darigold, Dean Foods, Hiland Dairy Foods, Hollandia USDA won’t release FMMO information Dairy, HP Hood, Prairie Farms, Royal Crest Dairy, Shamrock Foods and Upstate Niagara Cooperative. A total of 54,000 gallons and The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) reported that U.S. 105,300 half-gallons of milk were not purchased due to price Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has denied a request for release considerations, and no offers were received for 24,000 half-gallons of confidential business information collected through the Federal of milk. Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) program. • 50,400 units of 1%, 2% and whole milk in half-gallon and gallon In late October, IDFA said the U.S. Government Accountability Office containers, scheduled for delivery between Jan. 6 and April 1, (GAO) asked the USDA to provide data that would have reportedly 2020. Prices ranged from $1.60-$1.85 for half gallons and $2.85 for included the names and addresses of dairy producers, as well as milk gallons. Bids were accepted from Darigold and HP Hood. marketing information from cooperatives and proprietary firms, including monthly pounds of milk marketed, to whom the milk was • 93,600 gallons of 2% and whole milk in gallon containers, sold and prices for the associated monthly milk volumes. scheduled for delivery between Jan. 20 and April 1, 2020. Prices ranged from $2.85-$3.11 per gallon. Bids were accepted from Working with the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), Darigold. IDFA advocated directly with the USDA and Secretary Perdue, saying any disclosures of this proprietary information would Minnesota reopens DAIRI enrollment harm individual farmers, cooperatives and proprietary processors, and would significantly disrupt the U.S. dairy market. Moreover, The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) reopened it would have set a negative precedent for USDA’s handling of enrollment in its Dairy Assistance, Investment and Relief Initiative confidential information and would likely cause milk handlers to (DAIRI) program for eligible milk producers through the end of the stop providing the USDA with voluntary data submissions given year. that such information could be vulnerable to public disclosure. Producers who have locked in five years of coverage through the In letters to IDFA and NMPF in early December, Perdue said USDA Farm Service Agency’s Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) program USDA would not release the information “to any non-USDA entity, and who have not already successfully enrolled in the DAIRI program including GAO.” can apply. The MDA has already issued $3.4 million to about 1,800 producers Global Dairy Trade index drops representing more than 1,550 farms in Minnesota through the The index of Global Dairy Trade (GDT) dairy product prices program in its first round of payments. declined in the final auction of the year, Dec. 17. The overall index Producers not yet successfully enrolled will not receive the first round dropped 5.1%, with skim milk powder and whole milk powder of payment, but may receive a check for the second round, which will leading the decline. Among major products, prices included: be determined after all new enrollments have been received. • Skim milk powder was down 6.3%, to $2,867 per metric ton (MT). In order to qualify, farmers must have produced less than 160,000 • Cheddar cheese was up 1.7%, to $3,869 per MT. hundredweight (cwt) of milk in 2018. They will be paid based on production levels, up to 50,000 cwt of milk produced in 2018. • Butter was down 2.4%, to $3,886 per MT. An application form, an IRS Form W-9, a copy of their DMC • Whole milk powder was down 6.7%, to $3,099 per MT. enrollment form and a statement from their processor(s) detailing The next GDT auction is Jan. 7, 2020. the amount of milk produced in 2018 are required to complete an application. All materials must be postmarked by Dec. 31, 2019. New FDA commissioner confirmed Producers who are already successfully enrolled and have received their first check do not need to take any action. They will Shortly after last week’s Progressive Dairy Extra deadline, the U.S. automatically receive a second payment. However, producers who Senate voted to confirm Dr. Stephen Hahn as the next U.S. Food submitted incomplete applications and have not received a check and Drug Administration Commissioner (FDA). The head of the must return any requested information by Dec. 31, 2019 to be eligible National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), president and CEO Jim for the second payment. Mulhern, expressed hope that Hahn will advance long-term efforts to address FDA enforcement of rules covering manufacturers and For additional information and the application form, visit the DAIRI marketers of plant-based foods using dairy terms on labels and in program page of the MDA website. marketing campaigns. During his Senate confirmation hearing last month, Hahn voiced his support for “clear, transparent and understandable labeling for the American people.”

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Dominion Energy and Vanguard Renewables partner to form nationwide network of dairy waste-to-energy projects

THIS IS A FIRST OF ITS KIND PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN THE DAIRY INDUSTRY, A MAJOR UTILITY AND AN ANAEROBIC DIGESTER SYSTEM COMPANY. DECEMBER 31, 2019 | BY STEPHANIE GORDON

handle the offtake – renewable natural gas – and bring it into the market for more uses such heating homes. Kevin Chase, chief executive officer of Vanguard Renewables Ag, says partnering with the utility company is an essential piece of the puzzle. “They’re the key component within our partnership, because if you produce this renewable natural gas from the manure and you have nowhere to sell it, then you don’t have a viable project.” Currently multiple digester projects are under development in Georgia, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah with additional projects planned nationwide. Part of a larger commitment to sustainability

A Vanguard Renewables farm powered anaerobic digester facility in Deerfield, MA. Dominion Energy is one of the largest utility companies in the Photo courtesy of Vanguard Renewables. U.S., providing customers with electricity or natural gas. They have 7.5 million customers in 18 states. Dominion Energy and Vanguard Renewables Ag partnered in a Recently, the company joined with Smithfield Foods to form the more than $200-million nationwide partnership to convert methane largest agricultural-based renewable natural gas partnership in from U.S. dairy farms into renewable natural gas (RNG) that can be the U.S., to convert methane from U.S. hog farms into energy used to heat homes, power businesses and fuel vehicles. for local consumers. The recently announced partnership with The news of the partnership allows dairy farmers across the United Vanguard Renewables tackles the dairy side of the equation. States to strongly consider the business case of adding anaerobic “The environmental, consumer and agricultural benefits of these digesters to their operation. projects are truly groundbreaking,” said Diane Leopold, co-chief Vanguard Renewables builds and operates farm-based anaerobic operating officer of Dominion Energy, in a released statement. digestion projects, including a division for co-digestion (manure “We’re substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions from and food waste) projects and manure-only projects. The company U.S. dairy farms, delivering new sources of clean energy to U.S. has a multi-year alliance with the Dairy Farmers of America consumers and providing a new source of long-term revenue for (DFA), the country’s largest dairy cooperative, to engage with DFA family farmers across the country.” members about anaerobic digesters. By capturing methane from U.S. dairy farms and converting “We’re very excited about the investments from Dominion it into RNG, Dominion Energy’s and Vanguard Renewables’ Energy that will allow us to explore and bring this strategic partnership will reduce annual CO2 equivalent technology to a wider range of farms . . . and bring a new emissions by more than 450,000 metric tons. business case to anaerobic digesters on farms,” said David The companies say this is the same as taking nearly Darr, chief strategy and sustainability officer of Dairy 100,000 cars off the road or planting 7.5 million new Farmers of America. trees each year.

Vanguard Renewables Ag, the division of Vanguard Renewables that focuses on the manure-only to RNG business, will build and operate anaerobic digesters on partnered dairies. Dominion Energy will

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com (Continued)

Boom or bust for anaerobic digesters? In conclusion, as a dairy producer, all you’re responsible for is supplying the manure. Anaerobic digesters are large, sealed tanks void of oxygen that produce gas from organic waste such as livestock manure, leftover crops, or Co-digestion projects food waste. Over the past three years, David Darr has seen success and growing interest in anaerobic digester systems by DFA members. Vanguard Renewables currently operates five digester systems in Massachusetts. Each project ranges in time, operating anywhere from Historically, anaerobic digesters have been financed and operated by one to eight years. These five projects are part of the company’s co-di- the dairy farmers. The financial and management investment have gestion (manure and food waste) division. The projects run on dairies been barriers to adoption and a reason why digesters have not been that range from 300 to 500 cows and the manure is supplemented put in place on operations. with unwanted foods from nearby metropolitan areas. It takes about Darr says despite the interest, digesters “can be a little bit of a mixed six to eight months to get a co-digestion project up and running. bag” for some producers. He shares anecdotal evidence from dairymen Manure-only projects who have digester projects that don’t last. For example, a dairy producer built a digester and signed an eight-year purchase agreement Vanguard’s partnership with Dominion Energy will focus on manure- with a utility to sell electricity to the grid. But, when that contract only digester projects. Currently, manure-only digester projects have wasn’t renewed, the return on investment for the digester was no begun the permit process in Georgia, Nevada, Colorado, Utah and longer there. Viewing digester projects as a volatile investment deters New Mexico. some dairy producers from considering it for their operations. It takes about six months to build the actual digester and it takes Despite this, technology for anaerobic digestion is improving and so is between 90 to 120 days to get the gas conditioning equipment the business model as it switches from electricity to natural gas. “That’s permissions up to speed. In total, it’s “around 10 months to get your where we think working with parties who have done this before, with first molecules of renewable natural gas prepared to be sold into the technology that continues to improve, can allow dairy farmers to build pipeline,” Chase explains. on their environmental stewardship and provide renewable energy for communities,” Darr says. Manure-only projects are fit for large dairies that range from 3,500 to 4,000 cows or larger. “It has to be the bigger dairies,” Chase says. So you want to build a digester? “Manure has been digested once right? You think about it, the majority of the energy content has been taken out. So for us to be The announced partnership brings a new business case for anaerobic able to get a reasonable amount of gas production, it really has to be digestion on the farm. So what does it look like? on [large] dairies.” A dairy farmer leases land on their property to an anaerobic digester For the Dominion Energy partnership, the company is looking to company and in turn, works out an agreement to provide manure for partner with large dairies across the United States on manure-only the digester. The dairy farmer gets compensated for the manure used projects. While Vanguard has been asked about projects in Canada, it to feed the digester. is not currently on the horizon but the company is “taking a look at Vanguard Renewables, in all their projects, builds and operates it,” Chase says. the digester. The partnership with Dominion Energy means they Ask the right questions have a built-in customer for the RNG that is produced from the system. “Vanguard takes on 100 percent of the cost and workload of As for digestion going through a boom phase only to bust later on, putting the digester onto the operation,” Kevin Chase with Vanguard Chase adds that it’s important that dairymen ask the right questions Renewables Ag explains. before getting involved. Anaerobic digestion is attracting a lot of All of the companies agreements are 20 year agreements. Chase says it attention from many companies because of the “frothy market” in has to be that long to be a win-win for both sides. “It brings stability to California with its low carbon credits. the dairy and allows [us] to make sure there’s an acceptable return on “If the answer is no to any of those, or if they avoid the investment.” question, you should think twice,” Chase says. Chase says dairy farmers benefit by adding a new source of revenue, adding operational efficiencies that come from having a digester, and For dairymen considering doing a digester deal with a third party, contributing to being more sustainable and better stewards of their land. Chase says producers should talk to other dairies first and ask the company if they own and operate the system. “If the answer is no to “Dairy men have a hard enough job trying to make their any of those, or if they avoid the question, you should think twice,” dairies profitable in their industry . . . So for us, this is about Chase says. providing some diversification financially for them and it’s not about giving them more work,” Chase says.

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Manure from these cows is turned into methane that’s burned for energy. Turning cow waste into clean power on a national scale A NEW PARTNERSHIP WILL CONVERT WASTE FROM DAIRY COWS INTO USABLE NATURAL GAS. BY EILEEN ABBOTT

A 1,000-pound dairy cow produces an average of 80 pounds of Dominion Energy says its partnership with Smithfield is the manure each day. Multiply that by the estimated 9 million dairy nation’s largest renewable natural gas (RNG) partnership and cattle in the U.S., and that’s a lot of manure. that the Vanguard partnership is the first nationwide network of waste-to-energy projects for dairy. “The projects are a Dominion Energy, one of the nation’s largest energy producers powerful example of the environmental progress we can make — headquartered in Richmond, Va. — wants to put some of through innovation and partnering with other industries,” says that tremendous amount of livestock waste to good use by Ann Nallo, who works in media relations for Dominion Energy. converting poop into power, while at the same time, reducing pollution. By harnessing methane from livestock manure in both projects, the company hopes to simultaneously heat homes Already recently partnered with pork giant Smithfield Foods, and combat climate change. According to Dominion Energy, Dominion has now launched a second waste-to-energy project in the hog and dairy projects combined will “generate enough a strategic partnership with Vanguard Renewables and the Dairy clean energy to heat nearly 100,000 American homes and Farmers of America. will substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions from U.S.

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farms.” The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions “will be equal When asked if the waste-to-energy project will help the to taking 650,000 non-electric vehicles off the road or planting environment, the Sierra Club voiced concerns whether the nearly 50 million new trees each year,” says Nallo. process is able to capture all the methane. “Even a small amount of consistent methane leakage can be devastating to “The project is a triple win,” she says. “It’s a new source our climate,” says the Virginia chapter’s Tim Cywinski, citing of clean energy for customers, a new source of revenue this and other concerns mentioned in a critical report on the for family farmers, and there are significant benefits to sector from the environmental group Food and Water Watch. the environment.” In general, Cywinski says, “If Dominion really wants to do right by the climate and communities they serve, they would Methane is produced from a variety of natural sources — double down on true clean energy projects — like solar, energy including cow and pig manure. When animal waste and other efficiency and wind — and abandon their plans to build fracked- organic material decomposes, it produces methane. Although gas plants and pipelines.” methane emissions are lower than carbon dioxide emissions, In response to the Sierra Club’s concerns, Kevin Chase, Chief it is considered a major greenhouse gas because each methane Investment Officer, Vanguard Renewables and CEO, Vanguard molecule has 25 times the global warming potential of a carbon Renewables Ag, provided this statement about the Vanguard dioxide molecule, according to the Land Trust Alliance. digesters: When asked about Dominion Energy’s new waste-to-energy “Anaerobic digesters provide a proven method to capture project, Joshua Lynsen, a Land Trust Alliance spokesperson, methane, sustainably process organics, provide financial said, “While we’re not in a position to comment on this diversification to the American farmer, and provide green particular project, capturing and destroying methane to energy to colleges, universities, corporations, utilities, and prevent its emission into the atmosphere is a good thing for the multinational energy companies. Today climate change is top environment and can help combat climate change.” of mind globally and renewable natural gas is a significant tool Virginia Department of Environmental Quality Chief Deputy to combat this growing challenge. There are many different Director Chris Bast tells Changing America, “Capturing technologies and approaches for anaerobic digestion and the methane from hog lagoons and dairy farms and converting it design is a key determinant of the efficiency of the methane to electricity or renewable fuels is an innovative approach that capture. Vanguard has been successfully developing, owning, reduces a potent greenhouse gas and helps protect Virginia and operating digesters since 2014, and we are unaware of any waters. We are encouraged by private sector innovation in clean commercially deployed manure management system that is energy and we look forward to continued progress to reduce more efficient at sequestering methane. We simply do not agree pollution, protect Virginia’s environment and maintain our high with the Sierra Club’s assessment of the technology’s potential. It quality of life.” does not match our experience.” How does the process work? Nallo breaks down the waste-to- In Deerfield, Mass., dairy farmers like Peter Melnik’s family, energy science. Each project consists of a cluster of multiple whose Bar-Way Farm just celebrated its 100th anniversary, have farms (typically around 15-20), she says. The manure from been partnering with Vanguard Renewables to transform cow each farm is stored in covered ponds (called digesters), where manure into electricity. “As a businessman, I have to look for bacteria breaks down the manure to generate methane gas. ways to strengthen my operation,” Melnik says. “It’s a part of The gas is trapped under the covered lagoon or digester and saving our farm, making it more economically viable.” Melnik then transported to a central conditioning facility through says the system at his farm captures all the methane. “I don’t underground gathering lines. want the methane to escape. That’s lost income for me,” he says. In addition, Melnik emphasizes that helping the environment is “The conditioning facility simply removes the CO2 to also a priority by “responsibly handling the waste.” make the gas more than 99 percent pure methane, which is indistinguishable from traditional natural gas,” says Nallo. “The In Virginia, Nallo says, “Dominion Energy is taking a conditioning facilities are located along existing distribution comprehensive approach to clean energy and greenhouse lines, so once the gas is processed it can go right into the local gas reduction, and our waste-to-energy (RNG) projects are an distribution system for delivery to homes and businesses.” important piece.” She adds, “We’re shifting from coal to cleaner natural gas and rapidly expanding renewables to lower carbon The great thing about RNG, says Nallo, is that it’s emissions from our electric fleet. And we’re also partnering “indistinguishable from the natural gas we already use to heat with other industries like transportation and agriculture to help our homes, cook our food and power our businesses.” lower their emissions as well.”

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com PR NEWSWIRE New York’s MTA, the Port of Seattle, and Vanguard Renewables receive Energy Vision awards for advancing low-carbon fuel adoption

OCTOBER 9, 2020 | SOURCE: ENERGY VISION

The non-profit Energy Vision (EV) held its annual The Port of Seattle owns and operates Seattle-Tacoma awards event last night online, honoring three International Airport (SEA), the first airport in the U.S. to switch from natural gas to RNG to heat its terminal. SEA began organizations for advancing adoption of renew- purchasing RNG from Wisconsin-based US Gain on October 1 able natural gas (RNG): New York’s Metropolitan for heating buildings and powering shuttle buses. “Thanks to Transportation Authority, the Port of Seattle at this RNG contract, we’re meeting the Port’s [2030] 50% [carbon emissions] reduction goal a decade early,” said Stephanie Meyn, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA), and the Port of Seattle’s Climate Program Manager, accepting the Vanguard Renewables. Energy Vision award. Vanguard Renewables developed and operates six anaerobic RNG is a low-carbon fuel made by capturing the methane biogases digesters and an Organics Recycling Facility. It recently emitted as food, manure, and other organic wastes decompose. It has announced major partnerships with Dairy Farmers of America the lowest lifecycle GHG emissions of any currently available fuel. and Dominion Energy to build and operate a network of In the U.S. 130 RNG-producing projects are operational, another 80 manure-only digesters and co-digestion facilities across many are under development. The Energy Vision awardees helped lead this states. Through its lead investor Vision Ridge, Vanguard and trend toward RNG adoption. partners are committing $1 billion to convert dairy manure into The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) RNG. “Organic waste has two pathways,” said John Hanselman, committed to switching its more than 700 compressed natural gas Vanguard Renewables’ chair and CEO, who accepted the award. buses from fossil gas to RNG. “That will reduce greenhouse gas “One ends up being a dangerous GHG contributor, and the other emissions by up to 40,000 tons per year -- the equivalent of taking is a pathway to renewable energy and regenerative agriculture. 5000 cars off the road,” said Craig Cipriano, president of the MTA We are delighted to empower that second pathway.” Bus Company and Senior Vice President of New York City Transit Video can be found here: https://youtu.be/3Okd92wmsPo Department of Buses, as he accepted the Energy Vision award.

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com This post is part of a series highlighting sessions from the SOCAP 2020 Virtual Global Impact Summit The CSO-CFO-IR Connection in Practice — Case Studies of Productive Multi-capital Collaboration DEC 6, 2020 | BRADY PRESS

Key Takeaways Within this newest thinking are the six capitals: human, natural, intellectual, social, manufactured and financial. This discussion • Companies are increasingly taking on ESG issues and focuses on how the CFO and the C-Suite engages in creating recognizing the importance of seeing value creation not only collaborations related to the multi-capital model. Panelists in the traditional financial sense, but also what it means for share recent examples of effective partnerships between the a variety of stakeholders. The way investors, customers and sustainability, finance and investor relations functions within employees are thinking about these issues is changing companies and provide high-level guidance for success in designing and executing such partnerships. • Currently we do not have standardization for corporate responsibility and sustainability reporting. We need Speakers consistency so companies can be compared. Until then, having context for certain metrics and reporting is critical, as business • Suzanne Fallender, Leader of Intel’s Global Corporate models impact scores Responsibility Office • Internally, companies need to think beyond the CEO • Kathleen McLaughlin, Chief Sustainability Officer at Walmart and finance teams and tap into different expertise across and President of the Walmart Foundation the company to help with sustainability data collection. Transparency, integration and connection of value are crucial; • John Hanselman, CEO of Vanguard Renewables (the largest food how do you keep driving conversations at different levels of the waste recycler in the U.S.) company and engaging your CEO, CFO and leadership team on moving this conversation forward? Session Notes

Summary How is your organization looking at this problem from a reporting perspective? What is one practical example of what • Currently, conversations are happening within business and you’re doing specifically in terms of integrated reporting? society at large regarding balanced stakeholder capitalism.

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Suzanne Fallender, Intel’s Global Corporate Responsibility Office data back in front of them to show current status, what you could see if you start to institute the recycling and reusing of • At Intel, we’ve been doing reporting and integrating corporate that renewable natural gas responsibility and sustainability across our business for many years • Data integration is a huge challenge and we learned the hard way. We try to identify all stakeholders up front and see what • We did our first voluntary environmental health and safety data they have before starting data collection report back in 1994 (pre GRI) • The key theme in how our disclosures have evolved has been How does one in an organization go about bringing this issue around the concept of integration — embedding different of where ESG innovation and investment is, and then reporting CSR and sustainability functions across the organization and to the forefront in an organization in terms of a) it’s importance a tighter relationship with investor relations, our CFO, our and b) how to approach it organizationally? leadership team and our corporate secretary’s office and Board of Directors Suzanne Fallender, Intel’s Global Corporate Responsibility Office • One practical example: We used to do our external reporting • We just launched our new long-term 2030 strategy and goals separately, but now we use an integrated approach. Across around corporate responsibility and sustainability; we wanted our external reporting, financial team, governance team that to take a more integrated approach which I think is the way to does the proxy statement and my team that does the corporate get the buy-in you need from all different functions and really sustainability report all look at these reports to make sure tap into the expertise that exists in all these different functions we have consistent look and feel, consistent indicators and across the company consistent messaging with different levels of detail based on the audience • We went through this in-depth process of looking at what was changing the external environment and what was changing in • For the last couple years we have been using the 6 capitals the minds of our stakeholders, so we’ve been thinking about how — in our 10K, our corporate sustainability report, our proxy investors are thinking about these issues differently, what our statement — and have gotten a lot of good feedback form customers are doing and how this is changing in the calculation our investors as we do integrated outreach with our largest for our employees and our future talent; thinking about what it shareholders and a broad range of different types of investors will take to lead over the next decade on these issues • We’re bringing this stakeholder approach in and bringing it Kathleen McLaughlin, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation back to the data, how we were compared to where we needed to be in order to lead and how it connects to value — being able • We first came out with our ESG report in 2007 and have been to quantify the investments we’re making in sustainability with reporting on a range of ESG metrics and strategies since then financial returns • We have an ESG disclosure committee and we take a holistic • For example, one of our 2030 goals is to get to 100% renewable view across financial and non-financial disclosures; we’re energy for our global manufacturing operations; we’re already at grounded in the notion of shared value 71%. On the energy side we’ve been able to quantify how much • Whatever ESG issues we take on, we’re doing it through the we’ve invested in energy projects over the last several years and lens of what it means for value creation for the business in a how that’s translated to dollars saved in addition to the kilowatt traditional financial sense AND what it means for creating hour value for stakeholders and making progress on the select issue externally • We’ve invested $200 million in projects since 2012 and saved $500 million in costs and $4.5 billion kilowatt hours of energy; • So, reporting tends to reflect both business impact and societal impact this resonates when you’re talking to different groups across the company (engineers, financial team, etc.) John Hanselman, CEO of Vanguard Renewables • Another thing that helps internally is helping different teams • Vanguard Renewables recycles food waste into renewable know where they can play a role in your strategy or in the natural gas and renewable electricity and low carbon fertilizer disclosure • In 2016 we joined a strategic alliance with the dairy farmers of • This whole process has helped us think about other teams America who had done a great job of actually analyzing and beyond finance and the CEO and tapping into different benchmarking what they had in terms of their missions and expertise across the company and letting those teams know how ESG concerns around dairy and renewables they can help • We help them set an understanding of what they could be doing with those different waste streams. We then reached John Hanselman, CEO of Vanguard Renewables out to and worked with a bunch of large food producers and • We’ve been most successful with picking a very specific entry retailers to set goals and objectives as to how they could attain point — a project with a champion where we had a measurable those different levels and then worked internally starting point so we could collect all the data and understand • The challenge for us is that it’s multi-stakeholder, so you’ve got where we were starting the process and then having a very quick, the facilities management side, procurement, etc. Setting those achievable goal where we can show a significant change benchmarks and milestones and being able to communicate • Being able to have that measurable attainment for something them throughout the organization. That’s the most challenging has been helpful. For us, specifically with food waste and part of what we do converting to renewable natural gas from natural gas, there are • We deal with some externalities but try to make it as direct and such immediate and quick measurable changes on greenhouse measurable as possible, so being able to put that measurable gas and emissions

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• Then we said ok let’s deal with going to supply chain partners • We’ve been integrating different ESG metrics into our earnings and dealing with scope 3 emissions and things like that but calls for the last year. In terms of having a standard core set of keep it as a very focused initial program where you’ve got all metrics, it’s changed a bit each time but we have made sure to the stakeholders to have buy-in and to have a win — that was a integrate that in big piece for us • Before we launched our 2030 strategy and goals we worked with • We then help companies with all the metrics: what is the the IR team to make sure the ESG strategy ladders back to our conversion, what is that recycling creating, what do the Purpose of creating world-changing technology that enriches the greenhouse gas reductions do, and then we talk about future lives of every person on earth plans — what are the things you can do next? • It makes sense for the CEO to present at earnings meetings on • It is complicated. Each stakeholder has their own style of the integration of the ESG strategy into the Purpose strategy information/preferred practice and we’re asking them to • We redid our investor relations website to make sure it was change (in minor and in sometimes major ways) more integrated in all outreach. We’ve found it helpful to do Kathleen McLaughlin, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation outreach together with our leadership and investors. It’s about thinking: how does your earnings call fit into the rest of your • We have a similar initiative underway that relates to reporting communications? • We’re having this panel because we’re not in a fully integrated Kathleen McLaughlin, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation reporting world yet today. We want to get there, but right now at Walmart we’re probably at different levels on different • We’re seeing that too. There’s been a big evolution in the investor issues. One of the one’s we’re more advanced on is climate and community regarding who they bring to meetings and how the emissions reporting conversation goes. It’s much more integrated today • We’ve tried to lay the groundwork so that when the day comes • In the earnings calls, the leadership teams talk about what is where we can have fully integrated reporting we’re ready most relevant that quarter and you’ll hear about climate, waste in terms of the quality of the metrics, the consistency, the divergence and avoidance, promotions of frontline people assurance, etc. internally and the training and education of our people, racial • We’ve tried to set a science-based target under the science- equity (we disclose twice per year — advancement, hiring, etc.) based target regime for scopes 1, 2 and 3 and gender (we report every six months) • Our goal is zero emissions in our operations by 2040 for scopes John Hanselman, CEO of Vanguard Renewables 1 and 2 • Over the last 7–8 years we have been working with a lot of the • For scope 3 — how to work with suppliers. As a retailer, given movers in the ESG movement. What’s remarkable is even some the nature of our business, there are a lot of emissions in supply of our traditional oil and gas customers are 100% focused on chains (food, apparel, etc.). So, we lined out across all categories being able to bring forward metrics and data about what they’re and suppliers the kind of platform where people can come doing and what their plans will be on meeting the goals on and set goals and then we can support them in different ways climate in 6 different arenas: energy, waste, plastics, product design, sustainable agriculture, deforestation Have you seen a marked change in interest levels over the last few years? • From a reporting perspective, we built in our platform the ability to report through CDP at the same time they’re Suzanne Fallender, Intel’s Global Corporate Responsibility Office engaging in our efforts. We’re trying to encourage more people to report through CDP and follow that protocol and we’re also • Yes — the level of conversation I’ve seen internally and the types encouraging folks to align with TCFD for risk assessments for of conversations we’re having with our investors points toward their own company change. I’ve seen increased engagement with our CFO/his office • We’re trying to think through convergence and how we drive and the treasury office, internal audit, external reporting, etc. consistency across industries and sectors They’re having these conversations of how do we take this to the next level? • At Walmart, we start with the idea of shared value, that ESG issues are all integrated and that for companies to have financial • Our 2030 goals are much more aspirational and collaborative value creation they need to create value addressing the needs of than our 2020 goals stakeholders. If you don’t do that, you don’t have a business • We’ve also set out these collaborative initiatives to work with • We create strategies to get some type of outcome our stakeholders others in the tech sector to advance D&I work more broadly are asking for and that makes sense for our business. They’re within the tech sector and to work on how to get more pretty robust strategies that are then embedded all throughout companies to adopt science-based targets Walmart, so the relevant networks get reported from an • How do we really rethink conceptually and move the market? operations perspective right on people’s day to day management This gets me excited but comes with increased challenges scorecards and then some of those (depending on SEC and complexity. It doesn’t mean it’s getting any easier but it is requirements) end up in our 10K. The ones that don’t that are still creating more opportunity relevant to our business are in our ESG report. We see these two reports converged more and more over time Kathleen McLaughlin, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation What sustainable/ESG metrics will be reported on in the earnings • So many of these issues we’re tackling in the environmental call quarterly? How do these relate to traditional Wall Street? and social arena are about transforming systems — these are not easy things. To decarbonize business, to avoid waste, Suzanne Fallender, Intel’s Global Corporate Responsibility Office equity — these are systemic transformations

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• The 6 forms of capital as a framework is really interesting • We started doing third party assurance in 2012 and started more because it does help you focus on some things that could be on the environmental side but we have been moving more into leading indicators or might take some time to show movement; the social metrics starting with health and safety but actually there are so many factors to report it doing assurance of some of our diversity metrics as well; this • Even if we get to a point where we have consistent ESG has continued to strengthen our internal systems as the focus on reporting, we’ll still want to go deeper for certain audiences ESG increases on the investor side

John Hanselman, CEO of Vanguard Renewables Kathleen McLaughlin, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation • The understanding of the importance of this reporting at the • On the racial equity side, we’ve had programs and efforts ground level is a big change; everybody on the team has an underway for quite some time now but there’s no question this understanding that this is something they’ve got to do. It’s not year represents an acceleration for so many in society because an easy thing obviously when you look at disparities faced by Black people and African Americans in any system (health, education, Do you think there are concerns of not being able to get financial, criminal justice, etc.), there are massive gaps. their practices to the same standard of Sarbanes-Oxley that • We have redoubled our efforts and we’re looking at it in a couple dissuades companies from this integration work? ways — representation in our own associate base; we’re now publishing twice per year and we are looking to expand efforts Kathleen McLaughlin, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation with our suppliers/customers/communities to take head on this issue of racial equity as it pertains to the Black and African • We’re trying to lay the groundwork so that we’re ready for American community in America fully integrated ESG if and when that is feasible. It is true that a number of the metrics don’t rise to the Sarbanes-Oxley level • We’ve set up 4 teams: criminal justice reform, financial of standardization across industry regarding the name of the disparities, health disparities, education as it pertains to metric, the quality of the data, etc. workforce. What we’re trying to do is identify where we have an asset and see where we can help address the issue differently (in • We do have a way to go regarding every company being at the partnership with many other people) same definition and level of quality; there’s a lot of work going on in many places and many companies are trying to move in • We’re just in the middle of it now. These teams have been in this direction listening mode the last few months. We’ve launched a Center for Racial Equity at the Walmart Foundation which is earmarking • For example, for us on assurance, we’ve started with things that philanthropic capital to put against what we do in our company are “easier,” things that are quantitative metrics like emissions. so these things can go together Somebody can come in and look at this and validate and measure it. We report through CDP and have Deloitte and • We’ve committed $100 million over 5 years which sounds like Osidian coming in and helping us a lot of money but is only a drop in the bucket. The real action needs to be in our business assets and then the philanthropy can • That said, there are a lot of other areas where we work where come in a targeted way we’re still trying to figure out what the metrics are, such as forced labor in the seafood chain. We’ve done studies to find How do you ensure a science-based approach to goal setting and out the prevalence and incidence in the field, but how do you external reporting? measure it? Would you do this study every year? This is an example of one of the hardest things to measure — human John Hanselman, CEO of Vanguard Renewables rights in seafood. How would you ever know — there are so many levels of complexity • That’s pretty much all that we do. When dealing with renewable natural gas, food waste and greenhouse gas emissions, which we’re • We’re trying to put in the processes so that when people have trying to impede, going in and setting your understanding of a number they want to disclose there’s a claims process, a where you’re starting from is first with any and all of our customers validation process, and that it gets vetted at least internally and hopefully externally • What has been surprising to us is the secondary things that we can measure — what else is happening on the farms. We’ve been • This is the direction of travel and I think we will see this more able to bring this low carbon fertilizer to the farms, so seeing and more what’s happening with their reduction on synthetic fertilizers Has your engagement with your CDO and your finance team and how to quantify that changed and/or accelerated this past year, and in what way are • The science-based goals force you to go back and ask: what are the you making bigger commitments in terms of targets and goals? different levels of impact and can you measure and report those? Are you getting ready to share those commitments? Suzanne Fallender, Intel’s Global Corporate Responsibility Office Suzanne Fallender, Intel’s Global Corporate Responsibility Office • We’ve used a similar approach of looking at the issues systemically. We’ve been setting climate related goals for a long • We had released our 2030 goals two weeks before George Floyd time and have been working with others in the semiconductor was killed and we had already set out pretty ambitious goals to industry to drive that change double the number of women in our senior leadership ranks but also our underrepresented minorities in senior leadership positions • In the 1990s, we led work around PFC reductions. Overtime we’ve continued to drive different investments and technologies; • Right after George Floyd’s death our CEO was very vocal and we we’ve been able to drive a 31% decrease in absolute emissions have done some additional acceleration of the work by engaging over the last two decades even as we’ve considerably grown our with our employees directly; one of them is being transparent global manufacturing operations with our employees that we aren’t satisfied about where we are

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• With our 2030 goals we’ve set out to achieve carbon neutral Kathleen McLaughlin, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation computing as a global challenge; we’ll be working through • We’re at a crossroads where we aren’t providing the level a technology industry initiative in helping companies set of detail needed to satisfy all our stakeholders but we can’t science-based targets answer each of them so we’re trying to go more in the direction • We will continue to leverage resources and think about how we of disclosing as much as we can and making it easy to find can move this forward information by topic

Where do you think investors go from here? What have you Suzanne Fallender, Intel’s Global Corporate Responsibility Office been hearing is helpful or needed from investors as they seek • We get asked a lot by our suppliers and other companies about to make decisions about where to put their money? how to get started in measurement Suzanne Fallender, Intel’s Global Corporate Responsibility Office • We try to optimize our public disclosure so we’re answering the majority of questions across multiple frameworks so we aren’t • Most of the questions to date seem to have been about how to going to chase every rating that’s out there or use every part of gather data to understand where to begin, so it’s been really every framework, but we are going to make sure our disclosure focused on transparency, disclosure and government oversight is going out to the public and to all of our stakeholders and • I think this next phase is more people really trying to that it reflects the items we think are most important to our understand, what is this connection to value? I think it’s stakeholders and most relevant to the business about digging into performance connection, does it reduce • There might be data we don’t disclose because we don’t think a company’s risk, is a company managing it better than their they’re the right measure or there are limitations on the context peers, are they actually investing in a way that creates more around putting the data out there market opportunity? • We also ask when we do our outreach to investors which • There was a good report released by George Serafeim recently frameworks they’re prioritizing, which ratings they’re using the looking at ESG through the strategy lens how this helps you most, etc. and then we spend more of our time making sure that advance the business data is as accurate as possible and making sure we can explain to our internal teams why we think these frameworks are the most Kathleen McLaughlin, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation important to focus on • I think we need the same level of rigor around ESG as we have • There’s a tradeoff in doing the work and reporting on the work; around traditional investing you have to get this balance right • A few years back we had a firm measure our ESG scorecard and we did much worse than our competitors because we use more John Hanselman, CEO of Vanguard Renewables fuel, but we do not outsource our logistics like most of our • Frameworks have to push for standardization. Standards have competitors, so of course we use more fuel to be available to avoid manipulation. For example, what is • One of the reasons we have our own fleet is because we think diversity and inclusion? These things have to be specified we can run it better. We think we can reach carbon zero • It isn’t easy but we’ve done standardization before Suzanne Fallender, Intel’s Global Corporate Responsibility Office What is one of the biggest challenges you’ve seen or faced while • The business model is critical. The more people that can look at working with finance and IR? that context, the better Suzanne Fallender, Intel’s Global Corporate Responsibility Office • We have a similar situation in which we get compared to fabulous semiconductor companies — of course our water and • The biggest challenge has been the questions in IR’s head in emissions will be higher finding the data detail and answering research questions that help them make the case John Hanselman, CEO of Vanguard Renewables • Forging a partnership with IR has also been a great challenge. It • More and more of those tools will hopefully become takes a special IR leader to partner standardized so you can have comparative reporting Kathleen McLaughlin, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation • It’s fundamentally important as we’re grabbing science-based goals to make sure that you can create metrics, understand • I think it starts first with the CEO and the leadership team and them and compare them making sure they understand the importance of sustainability and that it’s intertwined. If you don’t have understanding from • ESG teams are growing significantly but they have to have leadership, you won’t be able to reach IR, so starting here is a standardized review platform so companies aren’t getting critical hammered for good work they’re doing (like Walmart in having their own fleet). You don’t want to incentivize bad behavior Suzanne Fallender, Intel’s Global Corporate Responsibility Office Where do you see things going in terms of providing that data? • In closing, transparency, integration and connection of value One of the things I’ve noticed is proliferation of organizations are crucial; how do you keep driving conversations at different that each have a different set of data requirements and levels of the company and engaging your CEO, CFO and questions/surveys. leadership team on moving this conversation forward?

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com NEWS

Vanguard Renewables Launches Farm Powered Strategic Alliance with a Call to Action for Food Manufacturers and Retailers

DECEMBER 10, 2020 | BOSTON (BUSINESS WIRE)

others to follow to impact climate change and shape a sustainable future for America and the planet,” said John Hanselman, Chairman and CEO, Vanguard Renewables. “This transformative movement will repurpose food waste that cannot be eliminated into renewable energy and low carbon fertilizer for farm use. Working with our Farm Powered Strategic Alliance partners, we plan to expand our organics recycling facility footprint to all major metro areas nationwide.” Hanselman explains that this is just the beginning. He expects the Farm Powered Strategic Alliance to grow to include other leading U.S. food manufacturers and retailers and adds that the FPSA has the potential to not only reduce the members’ direct climate challenges, but to also reduce the hard to move Scope 3 emissions from their supply chain partners. These are indirect emissions that occur in the value chain of the reporting company. Hanselman also emphasized the significant impact the Farm Powered Strategic Alliance will Unilever, Starbucks, and Dairy Farmers of America have have on helping sustain farms across America for future joined, committing to food waste reduction and repurposing, generations. and decarbonization goals In the United States, more than 40 percent of all food Major food industry leaders are joining forces alongside produced ends up being discarded. While eliminating that Vanguard Renewables to launch the Farm Powered Strategic waste is a priority, some of this unavoidable food waste is Alliance (FPSA) aimed at accelerating long-term commitments still sent to landfills or incinerators, but can be repurposed to avoid or eliminate food waste first and repurpose what can’t to produce renewable energy. The food waste recycling be eliminated into renewable energy. FPSA first movers include revolution that started in Europe is now sweeping across the Unilever, Starbucks, and Dairy Farmers of America. The Farm United States. Vanguard Renewables uses anaerobic digesters Powered Strategic Alliance commits to reducing food waste situated on farms to capture this energy and generate from manufacturing and the supply chain and repurposing any renewable natural gas or renewable electricity to be used in unavoidable waste that cannot be eliminated into renewable homes and manufacturing plants across the nation. Moreover, energy via Vanguard Renewables farm-based anaerobic digesters. the process produces low carbon fertilizer that host farms use The FPSA members also commit to begin exploring the process to support regenerative agriculture practices while it supports of decarbonizing their thermal energy usage by converting to the American farmer with a diversified income stream. farm-derived renewable natural gas. “The Farm Powered Strategic Alliance is an impactful solution The Vanguard Renewables Farm Powered anaerobic digester at to tackling both food waste and carbon emissions,” said Bar-Way Farm in Deerfield, MA converts unavoidable food waste Michael Kobori, Starbucks chief sustainability officer. “We’ve and dairy manure into renewable energy. Vanguard Renewables made great strides in eliminating food waste at the store level has Farm Powered anaerobic digester projects in development with our Starbucks Foodshare program, which has helped nationwide to support farms and the food industry. Farm- divert 25 million meals from landfills. The Farm Powered based anaerobic digestion significantly reduces greenhouse Strategic Alliance offers an innovative solution for our supply gas emissions and provides a pathway toward decarbonization chain, and brings us one step closer to our goal of a resource of thermal energy usage. The Farm Powered Strategic Alliance positive future.” accelerates long-term commitments to avoid or eliminate food waste first and repurpose what can’t be eliminated into Vanguard Renewables is one of the country’s leading renewable energy. food waste recyclers, with seven operating facilities in the Northeast and more than 20 Farm Powered® anaerobic “This unprecedented commitment by food industry leaders digester facilities in permitting and development nationwide. to the Farm Powered Strategic Alliance is a call to action for These new facilities will provide organics recycling capacity

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com (Continued) for the current FPSA partners and have capacity to recycle project won 2016 ABC Project of the Year honors. Please visit organic waste from future FPSA members. The Farm Powered www.vanguardrenewables.com to learn more. anaerobic digestion process combines manure from the dairy farm with food and beverage waste in the anaerobic digester About Starbucks and microorganisms convert sugars, fats, and other compounds Since 1971, Starbucks Coffee Company has been committed into renewable energy and low carbon fertilizer. to ethically sourcing and roasting high-quality arabica coffee. “Unilever is accelerating action to fight climate change, Today, with over 32,000 stores around the globe, the company regenerate nature, and preserve resources. We are excited to is the premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffee in the join the Farm Powered Strategic Alliance and are inspired by world. Through our unwavering commitment to excellence their vision to repurpose our unavoidable food waste to support and our guiding principles, we bring the unique Starbucks renewable energy production and regenerative agriculture Experience to life for every customer through every cup. To practice on farms across America. We cannot transition to a low share in the experience, please visit us in our stores or online at carbon economy alone and encourage other businesses to join http://news.starbucks.com or www.starbucks.com. us in this crucial alliance,” said Ale Eboli, Head of Supply Chain About Unilever Operations for Unilever North America. Unilever is one of the world’s leading suppliers of Beauty & Organizations and institutions with greenhouse gas reduction Personal Care, Home Care, and Foods & Refreshment products targets such as Dairy Farmers of America can also join the FPSA. with sales in over 190 countries and reaching 2.5 billion “Dairy Farmers of America has been working with Vanguard consumers a day. In the United States and Canada, the portfolio Renewables for more than six years to empower family farms includes brand icons such as: Axe, Ben & Jerry’s, Breyers, and support a more circular economy,” said David Darr, Chief Degree, Dollar Shave Club, Dove, Hellmann’s, Klondike, Strategy and Sustainability Officer, Dairy Farmers of America. Knorr, Lever 2000, Lipton, Love Beauty and Planet, Magnum, “Anaerobic digestion can change the economics and carbon Nexxus, Noxzema, Pond’s, Popsicle, Pure Leaf, Q-tips, Seventh footprint of a farm, allowing generational sustainability and Generation, Simple, Sir Kensington’s, St. Ives, Suave, Talenti energy independence. We are excited to see many more of our Gelato & Sorbetto, TAZO, TIGI, TRESemmé and Vaseline. All farms and dairy processing facilities taking advantage of the of the preceding brand names are trademarks or registered new carbon economy to make a positive impact on America.” trademarks of the Unilever Group of Companies. In addition to recycling organic waste and generating carbon Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) underpins the negative renewable natural gas, hosting a Farm Powered company’s strategy and commits to: anaerobic digester on a farm makes a real difference for the Helping more than a billion people take action to improve their host farmer. health and well-being by 2020. “If you’re just going to milk cows or grow lettuce, that’s really Halving the environmental impact of our products by 2030. hard because it’s cyclical; you need to be diversified and not depend upon just one income stream,” adds DFA member Enhancing the livelihoods of millions of people by 2020. Peter Melnik of Bar-Way Farm in Deerfield, Massachusetts. “A The USLP creates value by driving growth and trust, lot of dairies have been really struggling; the Farm Powered eliminating costs and reducing risks. The company’s anaerobic digester has been an important part of making our Sustainable Living Brands grew 69% faster than the rest of the farm sustainable.” business and delivered 75% of the company’s growth in 2018. About Vanguard Renewables Please visit unileverusa.com to learn more. Vanguard Renewables is the U.S. leader in organics to About Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) renewable energy. The company collects and recycles food Dairy Farmers of America is a national, farmer-owned dairy and beverage waste into renewable energy at its farm-based cooperative focusing on quality, innovation and the future of anaerobic digesters. The Farm Powered® process significantly family dairies. While supporting and serving more than 13,000 reduces greenhouse gas emissions and provides a diversified family farm-owners, DFA manufactures a variety of dairy income stream for the host farm. Vanguard also operates products, including fluid milk, cheese, butter, ice cream, dairy Organics Recycling Facilities to depackage and pre-process ingredients and more that connect our Cooperative’s family organic waste streams including expired goods and off-spec farms to family tables with regional brands such as Country batches before sending them to an anaerobic digester to be Fresh, Meadow Gold, Friendly’s Ice Cream, Borden® Cheese, recycled. Vanguard recently received the 2020 Energy Vision Plugra® Butter and Kemps® to name a few. On a global scale, Leadership Award and was named 2018 Organics Recycler we work with some of the world’s largest food companies to of the Year by the National Waste & Recycling Association. develop ingredients their customers are craving, while staying Vanguard Renewables won the 2019 American Biogas Council committed to social responsibility and ethical farming. Please Up-and-Coming Project Award for its AD facility in Salisbury, visit dfamilk.com to learn more. Vt. and the 2019 American Biogas Council Longevity Award for its Rutland, Ma. AD facility. Vanguard’s Hadley, Ma. digester

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Starbucks and Unilever join plan to turn food waste into renewable energy THE PROJECT INCLUDES VANGUARD RENEWABLES AND THE DAIRY FARMERS OF AMERICA.

BY EILEEN ABBOTT | DEC. 11, 2020

A just-launched strategic alliance of major food industry leaders because it’s cyclical,” says Peter Melnik of Bar-Way Farm in is joining forces to repurpose food waste with the goal of better Deerfield, Massachusetts, in a statement. “A lot of dairies have protecting our planet. been really struggling; the farm powered anaerobic digester has been an important part of making our farm sustainable.” Yesterday, Vanguard Renewables — a renewable energy company — announced that Starbucks, Unilever and Dairy Farmers of America “The Farm Powered Strategic Alliance is an impactful solution to will join them in attempting to achieve aggressive decarbonization tackling both food waste and carbon emissions,” says Starbucks and climate targets. Chief Sustainability Officer Michael Kobori, in a statement. “We’ve made great strides in eliminating food waste at the This brand new Farm Powered Strategic Alliance (FPSA) aims to store level with our Starbucks Foodshare program, which has significantly decrease food waste and repurpose what can’t be helped divert 25 million meals from landfills. The Farm Powered eliminated into renewable energy. Strategic Alliance offers an innovative solution for our supply According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), about chain, and brings us one step closer to our goal of a resource 30-40 percent of the food supply ends up being discarded. positive future.” While eliminating food waste in the first place should be a top The FPSA is expected to expand over the next year to include priority, according to the FPSA, another problem nationwide is that many other major food industry leaders, according to John unavoidable food waste is usually sent to landfills or incinerators; Hanselman, Chairman and CEO of Vanguard Renewables. instead, this should be repurposed to produce renewable energy, “We plan to expand our organics recycling facility footprint to all says the FPSA. major metro areas nationwide,” says Hanselman. The group plans to convert unavoidable food waste into renewable Hanselman tells Changing America, “The Farm Powered Strategic energy using the Vanguard Renewables anaerobic digesters, which Alliance is the product of a convergence of several important are located on farms. factors. It’s the demand by customers, regulators, and Wall Street Another plus — farmers say repurposing the food waste into renewable to see corporate community members making definitive business energy offers family farms a diversified income stream. modifications for climate change reduction. And, it is the efficacy of carbon negative renewable natural gas replacing fossil fuel.” “If you’re just going to milk cows or grow lettuce, that’s really hard

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Organics Recycling Facility Officially “Powered Up” in Private Ceremony Including Mayor of Agawam William Sapelli and Vanguard Renewables Chairman and CEO John Hanselman

DECEMBER 7, 2020

Vanguard Renewables officially opened its Organics Recycling Facility last week in a private, outdoor ceremony starting at 11am that included remarks from Chairman and CEO John Hanselman, Agawam Mayor William Sapelli, MA Senator John Velis, and MA Representative Nicholas Boldyga. At the conclusion of the remarks, Mayor Sapelli flipped up an oversized light switch which “Powered Up” the new facility. The advanced Organics Recycling Facility in Agawam, Massachusetts will depackage and process expired goods, off-spec batches, or unsafe to eat food and beverage products. The extracted food is transported to one of Vanguard Renewables’ Massachusetts Farm Powered anaerobic digesters, combined with farm waste, and converted into renewable energy. Vanguard Renewables is the largest organics recycler in the Northeast. In 2021, Vanguard Renewables will process nearly 500,000 tons of organic waste into renewable energy at its six farm-based anaerobic digesters; five of which are in Massachusetts. The Organics Recycling Facility and property is not open to the public. “We are excited to welcome Vanguard Renewables to our business community, and particularly appreciate that it is a green business; recapturing food waste that would have been sent to a landfill is such an amazing concept and we’re proud to have it here in Agawam ” said Sapelli. Also in attendance were several local dignitaries including City Councilors Mario Tedeschi, George Bitzas, and Rosemary Sandlin along with their Administrative Assistant Barbara Bard and local businessman Todd Bard of EvanLEE Organics. After the ceremony attendees were given a tour of the depackaging operation. “We’re thrilled to bring this state-of-the art organics recycling facility to Western Massachusetts to recycle food waste that otherwise would have gone to a landfill or incineration” said Hanselman. “The reception of Agawam town officials and the local community has been exceptional and we are truly grateful.”

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Vanguard Renewables announces opening of Organics Recycling Facility

THE ADVANCED FACILITY IN AGAWAM, MASSACHUSETTS, WILL DE-PACKAGE AND PROCESS EXPIRED GOODS, OFF-SPEC BATCHES OR UNSAFE TO EAT FOOD AND BEVERAGE PRODUCTS.

DECEMBER 7, 2020 | POSTED BY HALEY RISCHAR

Vanguard Renewables, a Wellesley, Massachusetts-based organics “We’re thrilled to bring this state of the art organics recycling to renewable energy company, has announced the opening of its facility to Western Massachusetts to recycle food waste that Organics Recycling Facility. otherwise would have gone to a landfill or incineration” said John Hanselman, chairman and CEO of Vanguard Renewables. The advanced facility in Agawam, Massachusetts will de-package “The reception of Agawam town officials and the local and process expired goods, off-spec batches or unsafe to eat community has been exceptional, and we are truly grateful.” food and beverage products. The extracted food is transported to one of Vanguard Renewables’ Massachusetts Farm Powered Vanguard Renewables recently received the 2020 Energy anaerobic digesters, combined with farm waste, and converted Vision Leadership Award and was named 2018 Organics into renewable energy. In 2021, Vanguard Renewables expects Recycler of the Year by the National Waste & Recycling to process nearly 500,000 tons of organic waste into renewable Association (NWRA). Vanguard Renewables has also won energy at its six farm-based anaerobic digesters; five of which are the 2019 American Biogas Council Up-and-Coming Project in Massachusetts. Award for its AD facility in Salisbury, Vermont, and the 2019 American Biogas Council Longevity Award for its Rutland, “We are excited to welcome Vanguard Renewables to our Massachusetts anaerobic digestion (AD) facility. Vanguard’s business community, and particularly appreciate that it is a Hadley, Massachusetts, digester project won 2016 ABC Project green business; recapturing food waste that would have been of the Year honors. sent to a landfill is such an amazing concept and we’re proud to have it here in Agawam ” said Agawam Mayor William Sapelli.

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Vanguard Renewables eyes national anaerobic digestion expansion with new alliance

DEC. 14, 2020 | WRITTEN BY COLE ROSENGREN

Credit: RNG Energy Solutions

Dive Brief: Dive Insight:

• Vanguard Renewables, a Massachusetts-based anaerobic Vanguard has seen steady growth since it was founded in 2014, digestion company, has launched the Farm Powered with a portfolio of sites across Massachusetts and Vermont, Strategic Alliance (FPSA) with the goal of rapidly scaling but this latest announcement is a sign of its ambition to have a up organics recycling in the United States. Initial members national footprint. include Unilever, Starbucks and Dairy Farmers of America (DFA). “Our intent is to take our first mover advantage and really be the premier food waste recycler in the U.S.,” said • The FPSA’s goal is to organize and advocate for best Hanselman. practices around reducing food waste, digesting “unavoidable waste” with animal waste at farm-based sites, Vanguard’s existing operations have seen success by co-locating and creating and utilizing biogas from the process. “It’s a with farms in a symbiotic relationship. The company gets supply agreement and it’s an offtake agreement,” said CEO favorable terms on using the land for its facilities and a steady John Hanselman, noting members signed separate contracts supply of animal waste to mix with inbound food scraps. The with the company. farms get free organic fertilizer and energy for their operations, • Vanguard has seven operational facilities in the Northeast, with the resulting biogas also often being used by local including a new depackaging facility in Massachusetts with communities in various ways. 250 tons per day of capacity. More than 20 new facilities are While these facilities have become key elements of processing also in development, with a near-term focus on metro areas infrastructure in New England, a region known for an array around New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlanta. of state and local policies mandating or encouraging organics recycling, Hanselman said there have been other factors limiting their scalability. In his view, separating organics at the generator

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level has still been viewed as too complicated or time-consuming “We’re removing all of the barriers to entry for folks to even among companies that support the concept. actually become part of that circular economy with food Vanguard’s recently opened depackaging facility in Agawam, waste,” he said. Massachusetts – known as an ORF (organics recycling facility) – can handle just about any type of food product unless it’s packaged While others have attempted to scale up anaerobic digestion in glass. While the concept itself is not new, Hanselman described networks in the past, and multiple newer players are also the ORF as an evolutionary step for the industry. Main features making moves, the concept has still not fully taken hold in the include a fully automated and contained process, with a complex air U.S. Traditional solid waste companies are making incremental handling system to prevent odors. The ORF also allows Vanguard to investments in compost infrastructure or pre-processing for create custom blends based on the needs of its digesters throughout codigestion at wastewater treatment facilities, but disposal sites the region. remain the primary destination for organics on a national basis. The ORF model will be replicated as Vanguard enters new parts Patrick Serfass, executive director of the American Biogas Council of the country, with the potential for multiple locations around (ABC), said Vanguard’s path appears to be unique in terms of scale Chicago alone. These plans for new digesters and ORFs are based in and technique among organics recyclers, as “they’ve found a way part on the areas where FPSA partners have large aggregations of to manage some of the more challenging streams of food waste.” material. Serfass said the sector as a whole still has ample room to grow, with For Unilever this is largely at the manufacturing stage of its companies that ABC represents taking a range of approaches, and operations. Starbucks is expected to deliver material from it appears to now be doing so at a more rapid pace. At the same throughout its entire supply chain, a move that will help improve time, he said it had been “surprisingly challenging” to get certain the company’s Scope 3 emissions for environmental, social and generators to talk about their efforts publicly, and hoped the FPSA corporate governance (ESG) reporting. Members of the DFA can help make those discussions more mainstream. cooperative, a key Starbucks supplier, generate material from dairy “The pressure from ESG investors has mounted faster than the processing facilities and may also be interested in hosting digesters pace at which companies have been able to figure out how to meet on their land. those ESG demands,” he said. “So I think what the FPSA offers to Hanselman said the goal is to have more than 20 new FPSA their companies is a way for them to learn from the companies that members by the end of next year and operate facilities in the top 25 have made early commitments and found a way to get ESG-driven metro areas within the next five years. companies up to speed faster on how to recycle more food waste.”

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Millions of Gallons of Stale Beer Is One Hangover From Lockdown JUNE 16, 2020 | BY NAUREEN S MALIK

Venues had been loading up on beer ahead of big events such as NASCAR, basketball championships and concerts just as the virus hit. Sales were crushed during Memorial Day, the largest holiday caught up in the pandemic, along with Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick’s Day and Spring Break, according to NBWA rankings. July 4th is next. “We have an entire supply chain from brewers to distributors to retailers who all have beer at risk in various stages of the supply chain,” said Lester Jones, chief economist for the NBWA in Alexandria, Virginia. Potential losses could reach $800 million to $1 billion for all industry players in the U.S., Jones said. The pandemic wasn’t such a bad thing for the entire beverage A worker at the Fort Point Beer brewery in San Francisco pushes a industry. Home confinement actually accelerated the pallet of kegs that couldn’t be sold to restaurants. Photographer: Michael Short/Bloomberg consumption of cocktails. Unlike bottled wine or hard liquor, beer has a relatively short In the concert halls, stadiums and bars across the U.S. that shelf life of about 90 to 180 days depending on whether it’s more have fallen silent during the coronavirus pandemic, an of a craft beer that hasn’t been fully pasteurized, Jones said. unusual problem has emerged: what to do with the vast quantity of beer that’s gone past its sell-by date. On-site premises account for about a fifth of all the beer sold every year and half of retail sales dollars, Jones said. He In March, even before the lockdowns became widespread, estimates that 30% of the lost volume from these on-premise about 10 million gallons of beer held by retailers had retailers may come back in June as lockdowns ease. already expired, according to estimates from the National Beer Wholesalers Association. As thousands of kegs are now Hillebrand, a logistics company that collects empty kegs being returned to distributors daily, Vanguard Renewables in and decants expired beer for disposal, already has orders Wellesley, Massachusetts, is among companies seeking to make to handle a record 1 million gallons of recalled beverage use of it by turning the beverage into natural gas for electricity this year. In addition to shipping some of that beer to generation. Others will use it to make hand sanitizer, but a great Vanguard, the firm has lined up other biodigestors across the deal of the beer will simply be decanted and dumped. country, according to Prabh Hans, vice-president of business development and strategy at Houston-based Hillebrand. “This is a tsunami of kegs,” said John Hanselman, chief Some of the beer could end up being used as fertilizers by executive officer of Vanguard, which will take about 60,000 hop growers, he said. gallons a week to feed expired beer to micro-organisms in biodigestors that release methane, the primary component of For the agricultural industry, global malt demand will likely natural gas. drop by 2 million metric tons over the next 12 to 24 months, said Andries de Groen, managing director for Evergrain, the Coping with a waste of beer is just one of the many barley unit of Germany’s BayWa AG. That’s just under 10% of unforeseen knock-on effects of pandemic-related lockdowns global demand. that have shut down swathes of the global economy. “It will have quite an impact,” de Groen said by phone. The headache for the beer industry goes beyond lost revenue, “Farmers have already harvested or planted for this season, with challenges like finding environmentally safe ways to so some of this malting barley will have to go to feeding dump the beverage, trying to prevent the theft of their kegs animals. That will reduce the malting barley premium over and managing a supply chain that wasn’t prepared for such feed going forward in places like Europe, Argentina and an unprecedented recall. Molson Coors Beverage Co. is Australia.” offering “keg relief programs” to reimburse bars for flat beer.

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Jordan Dairy Farms in Massachusetts uses a biodigester to turn cow manure into methane gas, which can be used for fuel or turned into electricity. Turning manure into money FARMERS AND UTILITIES ARE BURNING METHANE FOR ENERGY — AND CURTAILING A POWERFUL GREENHOUSE GAS IN THE PROCESS

JUNE 16 | BY JIM MORRISON

When Randy Jordan, a fifth-generation dairy farmer in central It was an unlikely alliance between the farmer and the Massachusetts, looked into turning manure from his 300 cows into consultant. “This guy genuinely did not know which end the natural gas more than a decade ago, he just wanted to find a way to manure came out of the cow,” Jordan joked. lower his increasingly painful electric bill. Along with four other farmers, they formed AGreen Energy LLC He knew that biodigesters, a sort of modern alchemy that transforms and began operating on five farms. By 2014, after three of the poop into profits, had been around for decades. But many of the farmers dropped out and sold their shares to Jordan, the project tanks, where microorganisms digest manure and turn it into methane smelled just right to Vanguard Renewables, a start-up that saw gas that can be burned as fuel or converted to electricity, had the technology’s promise with the addition of food waste. The been abandoned. They proved too complicated to manage. “It was companies merged. Vanguard soon raised $72 million in venture challenging,” he remembered, “and the money didn’t work.” capital and began financing biodigesting partnerships with other New England dairy farms. Then he met Bill Jorgenson, a longtime energy consultant with a vision. That caught the fancy of Dominion Energy, which is now Jorgenson told Jordan that while 87 percent of the digesters in investing more than $200 million to join with Vanguard to the country had failed, he had a new recipe for success: add food capture manure methane from dairy farms in Colorado, Utah, waste to the manure. It would increase the energy output and boost New Mexico, Georgia and Nevada and convert it into natural gas. the income for farmers through tipping fees from manufacturers, Dominion will own the projects and sell the gas. Vanguard will retailers and others looking to unload food waste. Best of all, it design, develop and operate the biodigesters. Farmers get paid would use methane from the manure, instead of venting it into the for hosting the digester and benefit from the byproducts of the atmosphere to contribute to climate change. process, including heat for their property, livestock bedding and fertilizer.

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com (Continued)

biodigesters on hog farms in five states, including North Carolina and Virginia. One of the hog farms is operating. None of the dairy farm projects, expected to be completed over five years, is in operation. “These partnerships with Smithfield Foods and with Vanguard Renewables are great examples of how we can create new sustainable business models around greenhouse gas reduction,” said Ryan Childress, Dominion’s director of gas business development. “They’re economical, they’re market-driven, and they’re scalable.” Unlike energy from wind and solar, gas from manure is available 24 hours a day, Childress said. Dominion estimates the dairy farm projects will produce 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas annually, a comparative eyedropper in the U.S. market, which used more than 31 trillion cubic feet last year. It’s more expensive than other methods. The typical cost to construct a biodigester and the accompanying facility to clean the natural gas for a farm with 5,000 cows is about $15 million, according to Kevin Chase, co-founder and chief investment officer of Vanguard. But processing methane from farms into natural gas helps reduce TOP: Giant tanks of manure slurry are seen at Bar-Way Farm in Deerfield, Mass. BOTTOM LEFT: The biodigester at Jordan Dairy the carbon footprint for companies such as Dominion, which has Farms combines manure and food waste. BOTTOM RIGHT: Farmer pledged to reach net zero emissions from methane and carbon Randy Jordan first sought a way to turn manure into natural gas over dioxide by 2050. a decade ago as a way to reduce his electric bill. The partnerships with Vanguard and Smithfield, Childress said, Randy Jordan’s local battle to reduce his rising electricity costs are equivalent to taking 650,000 cars off the road or planting has become part of the global battle against a warming planet. 50 million trees. “That’s huge carbon reduction bang for your dollar,” he added. Over the past two decades, there’s been a slow, steady rise in the transformation of farm and food waste to energy, but the process But how loud is that bang? It depends upon whom you ask. remains a rarity. The World Wildlife Fund’s director of dairy, Sandra Vijn, According to the Environmental Protection Agency, biodigesters said methane is “an important transition fuel” and is more on livestock farms total 255, up from 24 in 2000, driven by the sustainable than drilling for natural gas. market for renewable gas, a desire by farmers to diversify and “There are many industrial processes that require very high federal tax credits as well as government subsidies in states such temperatures that currently can only be achieved by burning gas,” as California, which has awarded nearly $320 million in grants she said. “And biogas can be a viable alternative until carbon-free and matching funds since 2015. options are technologically and economically feasible.” Why the investment? Poop is a pervasive problem, and a But Mark Kresowik, the eastern district deputy director at the source of methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon Sierra Club, the national environmental organization, said zero- dioxide. Trapping methane, processing it and burning it for emissions electricity from renewable sources such as wind or energy or selling it to the electric grid is a way to remove it from solar is the best choice. the atmosphere. It turns manure — a 1,400-pound dairy cow produces nearly 54,000 pounds of it annually — into money. “When you move methane through pipes and into homes, you still have the same climate and health impacts of transporting, Still, manure is a comparatively modest source of methane leaking and burning gas,” he said. “It doesn’t eliminate any from cows. While agriculture — livestock and crop production pollution. It’s simply changing the source of that pollution from — accounts for 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the drilling to capturing it in this other fashion.” United States, just 12 percent of that fraction comes from manure, according to the EPA. Cows burp up 95 percent of the Even small leaks and other releases of methane during repairs, methane they create, little puffs of pollution during digestion in as little as 2 or 3 percent, negate the improved greenhouse its four stomachs, far more than comes out the other end. gas effects over coal, for instance. Dominion has cut methane emissions from leaks by 25 percent in the last decade and Dominion, with 7.5 million customers in 18 states, partnered has pledged to reduce them by another 65 percent by 2030, earlier with Smithfield Foods on a $500 million deal to build Childress said.

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com (Continued)

“The dairy economy is never great,” Melnik said recently during a phone interview while plowing hay on his tractor. “I knew that to survive we needed to create different income streams. I was always taught to use the assets that you have available to you. The manure just seems to be one that was going unused. It just makes sense.” While the Vanguard farms in New England combine manure and food waste, the projects with Dominion will use only manure. For the Dominion projects, clusters of four to eight dairy farms will each have a digester that pipes methane to a second facility where it is processed before entering commercial pipelines. Vanguard earns money by selling either electricity or renewable natural gas. Driver Greg Rossignol pumps waste into the biodigester at Bar-Way Farm. Down on the farm, the process begins by collecting manure. Rebecca Larson, an associate professor of biological systems Methods differ, but often it’s washed from the paddock, the engineering at the University of Wisconsin, has studied the milking parlor or the feed lane into a trough and fed into a climate effects of agriculture and the biological processes that rubber-bladder-topped digester. There, microbes eat the organic take place when microorganisms break apart manure. matter, producing methane, carbon dioxide and small amounts of ammonia. The gases are piped out. “The benefits of digesting manure are significant,” she said. It not only reduces greenhouse gases, but the high temperatures On Jordan’s farm, the gases go to a generator that produces dampen the odors associated with manure and decrease electricity. Jordan, who has an interest in Vanguard thanks to the potential pathogens that can enter the watershed. One study merger, says electricity not used by the farm is sold directly to Larson co-wrote concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from two area businesses, Polar Beverages and the Wachusett Brewing a dairy farm can be reduced by 35 percent overall when biogas- Co. Jordan said heat and hot water from the biodigester save him based electricity replaces grid-based electricity. The problem for about $35,000 annually. He also gets 14 million gallons of liquid farmers, she said, has been the cost. fertilizer annually that he applies to his fields, a savings of about $100,000. And he uses the solid byproduct for animal bedding, Cost is one of several issues Vanguard helps solve. an estimated $20,000 savings. The company builds the biodigester and provides the expertise Jordan sees biodigesting as a partnership marrying one product to operate it. “People think anaerobic digestion is super line — milk — with another product line — manure. He keeps the straightforward where you’re basically throwing organics into cows healthy. A healthy cow produces milk for the market, but a tank and cooking it and magically, you produce natural gas,” also manure for the digester. Vanguard makes sure the other Chase said. “But it’s really a very difficult and time-consuming living organism on his farm, the digester, stays healthy. “Do I business. It’s four different things, a development company, have to help repair a pump one day when it’s broken? You bet,” an operating company, an energy company and an organic he said. “But I’m not nursing that thing and changing its diaper management company.” and making it go every day.” By raising capital, he said Vanguard has been able to hire 38 One feeds the other. One needs the other. “Life has changed. Life employees, including biologists, chemists, environmental is difficult. Life is better,” he said. “And I’m still here, probably engineers, construction staff and a development head. Since because of the digester.” 2014, Vanguard has benefited from a Massachusetts ban on disposing large amounts of organic waste in landfills. Retailers, institutions, breweries and manufacturers — including Whole Foods, Gorton’s Seafood, Cape Cod Potato Chips, Cabot Creamery and Wachusett Brewing Co. — pay Vanguard to take their food waste or pay a hauling company, which gives Vanguard a tipping fee. The company is completing a sixth in Vermont that will pipe gas to Middlebury College’s power plant as part of the school’s transition to renewable energy. For Peter Melnik, who runs the 100-year-old Bar-Way Farm in Deerfield, Mass., partnering with Vanguard was another way to diversify, something struggling dairy farms need. He figures the Melnik said the biodigester program at Bar-Way Farm provides $75,000 to heat, fertilizer and energy savings are $75,000 to $100,000 annually. $100,000 in heat, fertilizer and energy savings annually. The odor reduction, he adds, makes Bar-Way a better neighbor.

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Jordan Dairy Farms in Massachusetts uses a biodigester to turn cow manure into methane gas, which can be used for fuel or turned into electricity. How Buffett’s $10 Billion Pipeline Deal Is Doing Environmental Double Duty Helping Dominion Energy Turn Acres Of Manure Into Clean Power

FROM PIG-MANURE POWER TO WIND FARMS, VIRGINIA’S DOMINION ENERGY IS TRANSFORMING ITSELF INTO A RENEWABLE ENERGY POWERHOUSE—AND BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY’S CASH WILL ONLY ACCELERATE THE PROCESS.

JUL 9, 2020 | BY CHRISTOPHER HELMAN - FORBES STAFF

“Pigs are extremely efficient,” says Kraig Westerbeek, who oversees practice for farmers to spray the odoriferous lagoon waste on renewable energy production for Smithfield Foods, the world’s croplands as rich fertilizer—subjecting Smithfield and its former biggest pork producer. For what farmers put into them, they get a lot hog-producing subsidiary, Murphy-Brown, to environmental out. “They eat 2.4 pounds of feed per pound of gain,” he says. “And litigation and scathing publicity as local communities cope with they produce more gas per pound of live weight.” the stench and health risks. Westerbeek is talking about greenhouse gases emitted by the But today, Westerbeek has a better story to tell. In recent years millions of pigs his industrial farms produce each year. Inside his Smithfield has been working to perfect methods of capping giant barns, manure and urine ooze through holes in a concrete floor lagoons with heavy plastic covers that trap the methane before getting piped to open-air ponds called lagoons—some the (and much of the reek). The gas inflates the plastic domes in size of four football fields. In these lakes of livestock waste naturally amounts sufficient for people to walk on—like an extremely occurring bacteria—called methanogens—continue to feed and fart gross air mattress. Smithfield has partnered with Richmond, out more gas. All this methane ends up in the atmosphere, and that Virginia-based utility giant Dominion Energy to market the gas. is bad news for the planet. Pound for pound, methane packs 25 Under the plan, Dominion will siphon the pig gas out of these times the greenhouse effect as the standard environmental villain, anaerobic digesters, inject it into interstate pipelines and sell it to carbon dioxide. To make matters worse, it’s long been standard green-minded customers looking to cut their carbon footprints. The end result is arguably the cleanest electricity in the nation,

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natural gas will put the final bullet into coal and be a mainstay of U.S. power generation for decades to come. Berkshire already owns massive wind farms that generate 6,600 megawatts across the West—so it is also knee-deep in renewable energy. And Berkshire’s money will do double environmental duty, as Dominion will use some of the cash to help build its green future. All told, Dominion expects to make some $55 billion of investments by 2035 into low-carbon energy sources—spurred on by Virginia’s aggressive new mandate for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045. What a departure this is from the old Dominion Energy. The utility was founded as Virginia Railway & Power Co. in 1909 by Kraig Westerbeek, renewable energy director at Smithfield Foods, standing Frank Jay Gould, son of robber baron Jay Gould. Its roots are on a manure lagoon. Courtesy Smithfield Foods. firmly planted in Appalachian coal. Even as late as 1995, when its current CEO Tom Farrell came on board as general counsel, says Dominion Chief Operating Officer Diane Leopold. “It’s a win- more than half of its power came from burning coal. win-win.” With renewable energy projects, she says, “it’s about Over the past 15 years, Dominion has slashed its carbon dioxide how many boxes you can check. This one has an extra box.” emissions by 52%, first by replacing coal-fired power plants with Over the next decade, Dominion aims to invest $650 million cheap and plentiful natural gas, and more recently by investing into agriculture-derived gas projects. Smithfield will contribute in solar and other renewables. In a decade the carbon intensity another $250 million. The expected result: 8 billion cubic of Dominion’s power generation has fallen from more than 1,200 feet per year of livestock gas—thus preventing the emissions lbs. of CO2 per megawatt-hour to less than 600 pounds. This is equivalent of 3.5 million tons per year of carbon dioxide. That’s in the lowest quartile of American electric utilities, according to like taking 750,000 cars permanently off the road, or planting consultancy MJ Bradley Group. 60 million new trees every year. It may sound gimmicky, but A big contributing factor: the changing economics of renewable replacing just 12% of fossil fuel gas with methane captured from power. “Solar was not affordable; five years ago we didn’t have a pigs, dairy cows or landfills “can make everything net zero” on single panel,” Farrell says. Now Dominion, which had profits of $1.4 an emissions basis, says Leopold. billion on revenues of $16.5 billion in 2019 (and whose dividend yields 5%), is the fourth-largest solar operator in the country. Dominion is far from alone in its rush into renewables. Since 2003—when coal provided 51% of America’s electricity—the nation’s power utilities have dramatically cut back their combustion of coal in favor of renewables and cleaner-burning natural gas. Currently, coal fuels just 17% of electricity, and renewables have surpassed it for the first time ever. This trend is just getting started. With its new 2045 mandate for zero-carbon electricity, Virginia joins California, New Mexico, New York, Washington and Hawaii. David Giroux, portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price, sees no problem with utilities being able to achieve such targets: Diane Leopold, COO of Dominion’s gas business, says adding 12% just livestock gas can zero out carbon emissions. Courtesy Dominion Energy “Renewables have become cheaper than conventional power sources, and will also be more profitable,” because they eliminate Helping to underwrite those investments will be the $10 the ongoing need for buying fuel. Giroux sees 70% of U.S. power billion ($4 billion cash; $6 billion assumed debt) that Berkshire from renewables by 2040. Using “negative-carbon” renewable Hathaway said Monday it will pay for Dominion’s 7,700 miles gas from livestock should enable Dominion (and others) to meet of long-haul gas pipelines. Dominion had to sell its pipelines to such mandates without mothballing their gas-fired power plants. fund investment into renewables, says Hugh Wynne at SSR. And Smithfield, with some $16 billion in annual revenues, is the that gave Warren Buffett the opportunity to double down on nation’s largest pork producer, raising more than 30 million Berkshire’s pipeline holdings, at a good price. “Buffett is taking hogs per year. CEO Ken Sullivan says the hog producer has advantage of their situation,” says Wynne. been experimenting with environmentally responsible manure For Buffett, the deal complements Berkshire Hathaway’s existing handling for 20 years. In the early days they would cap lagoons, 16,000-mile pipeline network, thus supporting his bet that capture methane and use it to power simple reciprocating

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for the highest-value credits—meaning that customers could pay Dominion ten times more for hog gas than for the same quantity of gas fracked out of shale formations. That could be enough to generate an additional $100 million a year in revenue. Not everyone is impressed by the potential for renewable natural gas. “Putting it into a pipeline is better than letting it go loose,” says William McDonough, visionary architect and author of Cradle To Cradle, about the need for a circular carbon economy. “But it’s still a fugitive carbon. To say it’s the cleanest energy is not correct, if you’re considering climate change.”

A “lagoon.” Some hog farmers consider themselves to be in the manure management business. Derus Benedicte/SIPA engines to make power—but in rural areas there aren’t enough customers to use it. Then they tried gathering up manure and transporting it to a central location for processing into methanol and then biodiesel. But that wasn’t scalable, says Sullivan. After $40 million in R&D write-offs they settled on perfecting the systems being deployed today, whereby each farm’s manure lagoons have been turned into anaerobic digesters that capture its gas and sends it via pipeline to a centralized processing plant. After about three weeks in the digester, what’s left of the Wind power plus hog power at a Smithfield/Dominion JV project in Utah. manure comes out the other end as sterile, nutrient-rich organic Courtesy Smithfield Foods. matter used as fertilizer or even livestock bedding. The now less odoriferous water is sprayed on crop fields. The Dominion/ McDonough favors using ever-cheaper solar and wind power to Smithfield joint venture will deploy systems at hog operations in electrolyze water into hydrogen. “Green hydrogen” and other North Carolina, Virginia and Utah. climate-friendly efforts are already in the works at Dominion. Dominion is also working with startup Vanguard Renewables, COO Leopold says they’ve successfully blended 10% hydrogen which deploys similar systems at dairy farms. Vanguard is into their gas-fired power plants; “It’s expensive at the moment, backed by the foundation of eBay billionaire Jeff Skoll, among but solar was expensive, too.” others. It already has 42 diary farms signed up. Vanguard’s In the years ahead, Dominion could well become Virginia’s president, Kevin Chase, says that even though so-called dairy biggest private landowner due to all the solar panels it expects digesters had been perfected in heavily subsidized Europe over to install. And it’s begun replacing diesel-powered school buses the past decade, owners of natural gas pipelines were initially with electric ones statewide. Offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, skeptical at letting in bovine gas. “It was guilty until proven Dominion this summer has installed the first two of what could innocent,” says Chase, whose Wellesley, Massachusetts-based be hundreds of 800-feet-tall offshore wind turbines generating company has since landed long-term contracts with Vermont 2,600 megawatts. (Reflecting its renewable energy efforts, Gas, Middlebury College and Polar Beverages. Dominion has been named to Forbes’ annual Just 100 list of Though plenty of municipal sewage systems utilize similar socially responsible companies.) digesters to process human waste, these aren’t as cost-effective Even after Dominion has transitioned from nearly all-coal to because of the plethora of other stuff people put down the zero-carbon in a generation, it will still be looking for the next drain. “Animal waste is cleaner and more homogenous,” says best thing. Maybe nuclear fusion? “I don’t doubt it,” says Farrell. Chase, because we know that the hogs and cows are eating and “A sustainable company is one that adapts to challenges and what’s coming out. A solution for chicken waste remains an weathers the storm.” elusive “Holy Grail” because its high ammonia content makes it extremely caustic and tough to process. Renewable fuels are a priority at the EPA. To ensure that refineries and utilities use the mandated volumes of green fuels, the EPA requires that they either generate or trade for compliance credits (called Renewable Identification Numbers). Thanks to its negative-carbon attributes, livestock gas qualifies

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com A worker at the Fort Point Beer brewery in San Francisco pushes a pallet of kegs that couldn’t be sold to restaurants. Photographer: Michael Short/Bloomberg

The Gas Industry’s Survival Plan: Make Fuel From Cow Poop FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES THINK RENEWABLE NATURAL GAS IS THE ANSWER TO THEIR PR PROBLEMS. ENVIRONMENTALISTS THINK NOT.

AUGUST 31, 2020 | BY NAUREEN S MALIK

Polly is a 10-year-old black-and-white Holstein cow, the oldest “Without a doubt, small family farming in the United States is in a herd of about 300 on the Bar-Way Farm in Deerfield, incredibly tough,” he adds. Mass. Together they produce 2,000 gallons of milk each day. So is pumping natural gas, at least these days. Under intense They also make enough poop to fill about two garbage trucks. pressure from investors, customers, and climate activists, three The farm makes money off of both. interstate gas pipelines worth about $10 billion were canceled, In 2014, Bar-Way began working with Vanguard Renewables choking off Appalachian producers’ access to new Northeast and to install a biodigester, which uses specialized bacteria to Southeast customers. More than 30 cities have banned gas in convert organic material—for example, cow poop—into new buildings since July 2019. biogas, a versatile fuel. Once it’s purified, this biomethane, “It’s gotten to the point they need a proactive decarbonization also known as renewable natural gas (RNG), is chemically strategy,” says Jigar Shah, co-founder of clean energy financier identical to the main ingredient in the fossil-based natural Generate Capital Inc., one of the largest RNG owners in the gas that comes out of your stove or heats your water. country. “Natural gas producers now believe their growth prospects are more limited—to the degree that some people said “My grandfather always told me that to be successful, we should be planning for the obsolescence of the natural gas you’ve got to use every asset you have to its fullest,” says utility.” Peter Melnik, whose family has owned Bar-Way Farm Inc. for 101 years. He won’t disclose how much he’s That’s where renewable natural gas is supposed to come in. profited from the arrangement, but he will say it’s made Bovine waste is typically stored in vast open lagoons that emit the business “that much more viable.” methane—a greenhouse gas more than 80 times as potent as

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Renewable Natural Gas Rises digester can produce, according to BloombergNEF. The name “renewable natural gas” itself is a marketing term, coined a RNG production over time, in million BTUs per day decade ago to play off the name recognition of its fossil fuel twin. But the name also points to what makes RNG many gas companies’ lifeline of choice: They can use their existing infrastructure to deliver it. “The more you deploy renewables, the more you need the gas grid,” says Jonathan Peress, senior director of regulatory affairs with Sempra Energy’s SoCalGas, the largest U.S. gas utility, who was formerly senior director of energy markets and utility regulation at the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group. SoCalGas has been campaigning the state to embrace RNG amid a push to electrify buildings. So far the effort appears to be paying off. The California Public Utilities Commission is considering a rule that would require the state’s gas utilities to procure a certain percentage of RNG. SoCalGas is also pushing for an RNG credit for both residential and commercial customers, and it’s announced plans to replace 5% of its gas supply with RNG by 2022 and 20% by 2030. carbon dioxide over 20 years— making agricultural waste the single California is by far the biggest market for RNG, but others are biggest contributor to the country’s total methane emissions from coming up. Over the summer, Oregon finalized rules that will human activity. Both biogas and fossil natural gas are mostly methane, allow utilities to supply as much as 30% of gas customers with and though they burn more cleanly than the megapolluter coal, they RNG by 2050, and several other states are considering paying still emit carbon dioxide. But by diverting cow poop into biodigesters fees to those adding RNG to the grid, similar to existing credits in the process of making RNG, gas companies argue, the effect is a net for wind and solar power. Dominion Energy announced it will climate win. Virginia-based utility giant Dominion Energy Inc. claims invest as much as $2 billion in RNG over the next decade, in part that supplying only 4% of its customers with biogas would be enough through partnerships with Vanguard Renewables and pork- to offset the emission from its entire gas system. producing giant Smithfield Foods Inc. Utility owner Duke Energy That’s the type of math that irks Matt Vespa, an attorney for the nonprofit Corp. made its first investment in the renewable gas sector by climate litigation group Earthjustice. “Just 4% of the gas needs to be acquiring a minority stake in SustainRNG in July. renewable gas, and then all of the sudden you have 100% clean energy,” Melnik started looking into biodigesters more than a decade he says, “requires some shoddy assumptions”—for instance, that all the ago with other Massachusetts farmers as a way to diversify their methane coming out of all those lagoons is inevitable in factory farming. income and make their operations more sustainable. He spent But there are plenty of other ways to solve this problem that don’t extend more than five years researching digesters, traveling to plants in our reliance on polluting fuels, Vespa says. Germany and across the U.S., to figure out the right technology Earthjustice is far from the only climate organization ringing the to use, then how to pay for it and permit it. It was through the alarm bells about RNG. Mark Kresowik, a deputy director of the financing process that he came across Vanguard. Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, says RNG is a costly distraction Each week, Melnik adds about 175 tons of manure, mixed with that will only slow the energy industry’s transition away from about 15 to 20 trucks’ worth of food waste from 19 Whole Foods hydrocarbons. (The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Market stores, a Cabot Creamery plant, New England Natural Philanthropies, the charitable organization created by Michael R. Bakers, Tree House Brewing, the MGM Springfield casino, and Bloomberg, founder and owner of Bloomberg News parent company Hood ice cream. What’s left behind is a liquid fertilizer, which can Bloomberg LP.) “This is the last gasp of the gas industry. They know then be further processed to create fluffy dry bedding for the barn. that electrification is superior,” Kresowik says. “If you go down that Polly, the grande dame of the herd, had most of her joint pain dead-end route, it increases the cost to consumers in the long run.” disappear once Melnik subbed in the biodigester bedding for the That said, getting rid of gas won’t be easy. It’s enjoyed unprecedented hardwood chips she used to sleep on. She’s now one of the farm’s growth over the past decade as the boom in shale oil and gas top milk producers. Extracting the methane eliminates almost all production made costs plummet. Today gas accounts for about of the odor, so neighbors no longer complain about the scent. a third of America’s total energy consumption, and it’s projected The farm has drawn visitors from the Massachusetts Institute to rise to 40% this year, data from the U.S. Energy Information of Technology; utility representatives; national, state, and local Administration show. regulatory officials; and businessmen from Japan to learn about Nationwide, RNG could be used to displace 13% of total U.S. the process, according to Vanguard Chief Executive Officer John gas demand by 2040, according to a study commissioned by the Hanselman. The company currently runs biodigesters on five American Gas Foundation last year, along with EIA data. Generate Massachusetts farms, including Bar-Way, and is in the final stages Capital’s Shah, who keeps a map of all viable U.S. RNG spots, says of setting up another one in Vermont; yet another one planned that cap is likely closer to 3% of U.S. gas demand. Still, that’s a sizable for upstate New York is in the permitting stage. market. “People have a hard time understanding what 3% is,” but “Every farm that we worked with and met with, they all want to that’s enough to put RNG on par with where solar is today, he says. be good stewards of the land—they understand climate change Over the years, RNG has had an uneasy relationship with the fossil better than anybody,” says Hanselman, who’s also working on fuel industry, much as solar and wind have clashed with traditional projects in Georgia and Texas. utilities. It’s also a tougher sell as an investment: A typical RNG The thing with the bedding, though, is just a happy accident. “We project costs about $17 million, but can top out as high as $100 knew we would be able to get the energy out, we knew we would million, according to industry lobbying group RNG Coalition. That’s be able to recycle food waste, but we didn’t know how valuable compared to the $6 to $8.5 million price tag for an Appalachian the bedding material is,” Hanselman says. “It’s like unintended gas well, which can also pump many times more gas in a day than a consequences.”

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com NOVEMBER 02, 2020 JOHN HIBMA FOR PROGRESSIVE DAIRY

Siblings Danielle and Chase Goodrich are diversifying their farm’s income stream by partnering in a manure methane project. Photo provided by John Hibma. Methane from manure: An income stream to consider

Manure is a fact of life on the dairy farm. Sooner or later, every expertise to do. Dairy farms find themselves between a rock dairy is confronted with added costs associated with managing and and a hard place as they continue to struggle financially in an disposing of manure. industry with chronically low milk prices and the trend to grow herd sizes to attain greater efficiencies and economies of scale. And, even though manure is universally accepted as an More cows means more poop that must to be stored, managed, indispensable source of plant nutrients and soil amendments, it’s processed and disposed of in a more stringent regulatory generally regarded as a nuisance that most dairy farmers would environment. gladly avoid if it were possible. Companies specializing in mitigating challenges posed by Ironically, though, for all the challenges associated with manure, agricultural waste are now partnering with dairy farms. there’s a positive side to this organic substance, as a source of Vanguard Renewables located in Wellesley, Massachusetts, is renewable energy that goes well beyond its traditional use as a one such company that is working with dairy farms across the fertilizer. Slow to emerge, there is a growing industry focused nation in developing systems to solve organic waste disposal on collecting and marketing the biomethane produced by the challenges, while at the same time producing renewable natural anaerobic fermentation of manure. gas that will generate an income stream. This is a win-win for Capturing methane on dairies is certainly not a new concept. the dairy industry, as it dramatically reduces methane being Industries have recognized the marketable value of this renewable released into the atmosphere. energy source for decades. However, building facilities and Because of the nearly uncontained and unstoppable production processing biogas is a complex and expensive undertaking – of methane escaping from the majority of dairy manure storage something most dairy farms do not have the funds, time or tanks and lagoons, animal agriculture in general, and the dairy

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industry in particular, has been singled out as a major contributor combined with manure, greatly increases the efficiency of anaerobic to global warming, due to methane’s ability to absorb the sun’s digestion and ultimately produces more methane from a given heat. Dairy farmers have learned – some the hard way – they must amount of organic matter. conform to a changing set of standards, which now includes the With the addition of food waste to the digestion process, Vanguard environmentally responsible handling of their waste products. Dairy Renewables helps solve a second nagging environmental challenge farmers, today, must shift their thinking so as to stay one step ahead – tons of food waste being sent to landfills. Now, food waste can also of critics of animal agriculture and be proactive in how they present be tapped for its renewable energy value, all while reducing the their industry to capricious consumers and environmentalists bent strain on solid waste landfills. on shutting down animal agriculture. Projects of this magnitude are no small undertaking. Mature In Salisbury, Vermont, three generations of the Goodrich family Holstein cows produce over 100 pounds of manure and urine per have been dairy farming since 1956. Beginning with just a handful day. That’s 90,000 pounds of raw manure just from the milk cows. of cows, the dairy has increased in size in steps over the years For a herd this size, Vanguard is building both underground and and currently milks 900 cows. Brother and sister team Chase and aboveground holding tanks with multi-million gallon capacities for Danielle Goodrich, having both graduated from college in 2009 and both manure from the dairy herd and incoming food waste trucked both wanting to stay working on the dairy, now assume the dairy’s in from multiple sources in the region. The manure and food waste day-to-day management responsibilities, with Chase focusing on the are then blended together in another massive tank, where the crops and farming and Danielle managing the dairy herd. anaerobic digestion and biogas production occurs under carefully Danielle states her interest in capturing methane goes back more monitored conditions. than a decade – long before the herd size made it to 900 cows – According to Hanselman, even though the COVID-19 pandemic when one of her college professors suggested the idea. The family has unfortunately slowed the project down, about 65% of the gas thought the idea had merit and eventually contracted with Vanguard produced at the Goodrich dairy is slated to be piped directly up Renewables to design, build and manage an anaerobic manure- the road to a local school where it will provide 100% of the school’s digestion system that would enable the dairy to capture, purify and thermal needs – both heating and cooling. The other 35% is being market biomethane, as well as provide a digestate/fertilizer that’s sold to Vermont Gas Systems Inc. much more environmentally friendly and easier to apply. After the methane has been extracted, the remaining digestate is “Knowing that milk prices will always be volatile and stored and eventually spread on the Goodrich farmland – about cyclical, we see this as a way to diversify our income source,” 1,400 acres – in a much drier and easier-to-handle form that’s less Danielle says. “And, knowing that, at the same time, we’re odoriferous. Additionally, new technology will also be removing doing a favorable thing for the environment; [this project] is much of the phosphorus from the digestate, enabling Chase to a no-brainer.” dramatically reduce excessive levels of phosphorus going onto the land – a common challenge and limiting factor of spreading dairy The added income stream for the Goodrich Dairy comes in the manure straight from the holding pond. form of a lease payment from Vanguard Renewables for use of The Goodrich family is essentially in the same boat as most other the property. Goodrich Dairy receives no income from sale of the dairy farms in the U.S. – constantly looking for ways to reduce methane produced at the farm. Vanguard essentially rents property expenses as costs of production continue to escalate, while milk on the farm to conduct its methane production operations. prices continue their cycles of volatility, and the milk price in real John Hanselman, CEO of Vanguard Renewables, explains that a dollars continues to decline. decade ago, the prevailing thinking was methane produced on a farm Chase states the farm has reached a herd size they would like to would be used to power a generator to produce electricity, to then sustain. The land base around the dairy is limiting any future be fed into a local power grid. That’s all changed, Hanselman says. growth, and they really don’t want to produce more milk. They need Another renewable energy source, solar power from photovoltaics, to find ways to produce milk for less cost. has become so inexpensive in recent years, that producing renewable energy and converting it to electricity at the farm in a large generator “Danielle and I would like to make our livings here for [many years], is no longer a viable option. Instead, Vanguard focuses solely on but we had to look for ways to avoid making more milk,” Chase says. producing methane at the dairy farm and selling it directly to end Partnering with management companies like Vanguard Renewables users or a gas utility. and producing renewable energy may not be in the cards for every One caveat in the production of methane from straight cow manure dairy farm. But, for the Goodrich Dairy, it’s a good fit that will offset is that the anaerobic digestion of manure is not very efficient. production costs and have a positive impact on their bottom line, Hanselman and his team of engineers and chemists learned many as well as reducing environmental impact and lowering the carbon years ago that the introduction of food waste coming from grocery footprint of the dairy farm. stores, restaurants, beverage manufacturers and the like, when

Vanguard Renewables | Media Coverage vanguardrenewables.com Vanguard Renewables and Partners Tap into Dairy Biogas for RNG

ARLENE KARIDIS | JAN 05, 2021

As the renewable natural gas (RNG) market evolves, there’s been an In the North East most of the RNG is used for thermal energy to uptick in two project types: one is RNG produced from dairy farm make electricity or for heating and cooling buildings. manure; another is RNG from manure that’s co-digested with food RNG from the manure-only projects all goes to California, waste. RNG project developer Vanguard Renewables is investing which is looking at this lower-carbon alternative as it scrutinizes in both market options, with six anaerobic digester (AD) projects emitters of greenhouse gases, including animal waste. under construction at farms in Colorado, Georgia, and Nevada, to make either electricity, heat, or transportation fuel. And it’s “The state applies economic drivers and policy to address growing its network to pump up its feedstock supply while helping the emissions problem [California’s LCFS program farmers cut greenhouse gas emissions. requires oil refineries and distributors to ensure their The co-digested material is converted to RNG for electricity and fuel meets greenhouse gas emissions targets]. By forcing heat. The higher-dollar, manure-only projects make output that large gas companies to buy RNG they have incentivized goes to California for transportation fuel. our industry to expand rapidly to help generators Vanguard has buy-in from Richmond, VA-based utility, Dominion meet their mandated targets for renewables,” says Energy, who will sell this renewable product around the country. Hanselman. Additionally, 72 farms in 11 U.S. states have come on board who see these ventures as a way to not only cut emissions, but better Manure-only and co-digestion projects each have their place in manage massive tons of cow manure while increasing their income, the market because the resulting products from each have very says John Hanselman, chairman and CEO of Vanguard Renewables. different price points. Vanguard is reaching the agriculture sector through an alliance Vanguard says it can make food waste biogas at half to one-third with Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), which is the largest dairy the cost of biogas from manure only. This cheaper renewable co-op in the U.S. with 8,000 family farms as members. is catching on among buyers who have made a voluntary commitment to break away from fossil fuel. Those who pursue “Farms all over the U.S. are looking to convert manure into RNG. In the higher-dollar product do it to meet regulatory obligations. the next 36 months we will have food waste co-digestion systems in There are pluses and drawbacks with either type of project. each of the top 25 metro areas of the U.S.,” Hanselman says. Manure is faster to collect and process than food waste. But it To scale further, Vanguard just launched an alliance with contains less energy since the cow has already digested the food, foodservice industry partners to capture food waste and feed what so these projects must be fairly large-scale to pencil out. To put can’t be eliminated into the farm-based ADs.

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energy value in perspective, food waste has two to five times the gas Dominion Energy is partnering with Vanguard to develop a potential based on chemistry analyses, according to Hanselman. nationwide network of dairy RNG projects – a partnership worth about $200 million. But once food is added to the equation the operations are more involved. In this venture, Vanguard will design, develop, and operate the ADs while Dominion will own the projects and market to consumers, “Farmers already collect manure, and we just process it including other public utilities, among other commercial through anaerobic digesters. But with food waste we have to and industrial customers such as colleges, universities, and create relationships with waste haulers, food manufactures, transportation companies. hospitals, colleges, and universities. We have to collect it For Dominion Energy, like DFA, RNG has been a vehicle to and get it to the farm, which is much more cumbersome,” sustainability. The utility’s ultimate goal is net-zero carbon and Hanselman says. methane emissions across its natural gas and electric operations by 2050. DFA markets milk from thousands of dairy farms across the U.S. and also provides financial and other support to farmers. As part of that “Few technologies are capable of doing so much good, so service, it is involved in AD. broadly across the economy. It provides clean energy for “It’s a relatively new opportunity for farmers, and we help them get consumers, reduces farm emissions for the climate, and access to quality information and trusted partners,” says David Darr, gives an economic boost to family farmers,” says Ryan senior vice president and chief Strategy and Sustainability officer for Childress, Dominion Energy’s director of Gas Business Dairy Farmers of America. Development. Until just a few years ago, dairy farmers wanting to set up an AD had Childress points to strategic partnerships as crucial for success, to finance, build, and operate it themselves. especially with new technology. “Vanguard provided a paradigm shift in this space where they were “Vanguard is the ideal partner because of their expertise with willing to invest in, own, and operate anaerobic digesters on dairy anaerobic digestion in the dairy sector and their strong relationship farms. DFA has worked with Vanguard for five years and now has the with the Dairy Farmers of America. Thanks to Vanguard’s most active pipeline for these projects it’s ever seen, nationwide and pioneering leadership, we’re now able to develop dairy renewable across a range of farm sizes,” Darr attests. natural gas projects for the first time on a nationwide scale,” he says. Dairy farms do not have compliance requirements for methane emissions but still look to reduce their environmental footprint, and some see AD systems as a worthwhile investment to get there.

“We would rather have the market drive adoption and interest than have policy or regulation be the drivers… We are excited and optimistic that hundreds of dairy farmers will be able to participate in programs like this to further reduce their environmental footprint and increase diversity and their revenue streams,” Darr says.

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