by Nathalie Hoffman (LCFS Consulting Services, Inc./BioCycle Magazine) Before January 2021, no food scraps-to-renewable natural gas (RNG) pathways had been certified by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) under CA-GREET 3.0 the version of the life cycle analysis model used by the agency since 2019 to certify Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) pathways. Then in January, CARB used the rare Design-based pathway process to certify a pathway in the City of Napa, California for Zero Waste Energy (ZWE), as described in a recent BioCycle article.
That certification was noteworthy not only because of the process used, but also because of the ultra-low carbon intensity (CI) of the pathway at -165 gCO