Hartford Business Journal

14 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | DECEMBER 19, 2022 Rashi Akki, founder and CEO of Pennsylvania-based Ag-Grid Energy, which formed a partnership with Hytone Farm to build an anaerobic digester system in Coventry. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED Trash To Treasure Coventry dairy farm converts manure, food waste to renewable electricity By Andrew Larson alarson@hartfordbusiness.com W hen New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart received a call from Rashi Akki, asking if the city wanted to buy the output from a biogas facility fueled by cow manure, she was taken aback. "I remember looking at my staff and going, 'Absolutely not,'" Stewart said. Now, she has a 10-year contract with Hytone Ag-Grid LLC to receive the output — electricity — to power three elementary schools. What seemed like an unlikely proposition turned out to be a cost- saving, environmentally friendly move for the five-term mayor and her city of roughly 74,000. The electricity comes from a 1,000- acre dairy farm in Coventry, which has been owned by the same family for four generations. The farm has 375 adult and 240 baby cows, which generate 12,000 gallons of manure daily. Akki, the founder and CEO of Ag-Grid Energy LLC, based in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, is constructing Connecticut's second farm anaerobic digester that produces electricity. The first, at Fox Hill Farm in Thompson, was also built by her company. It went into opera- tion in December 2020. At Hytone, manure will flow into a digester — a massive airtight dome — where microorganisms break down the organic materials, such as carbon, in the absence of oxygen. They release biogas, which contains mostly methane. The equipment captures and burns the methane, converting it into carbon dioxide that is used to produce 550 kilowatts of electricity. The material leftover from the anaerobic digestion process is called digestate, a nutrient-rich substance that Hytone Farm will use as fertilizer. Hytone's digester also processes food waste, which contains even more carbon than manure. In phase two of the project, Akki plans to install equipment that will depackage food waste — removing plastics and other contaminants from the organic matter — that gets processed the same way as the manure. Akki expects Hytone to begin producing electricity in January and to receive solid waste permits from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DDEP) by the second quarter of 2023. Hytone is expected to generate 3.7 million kWh of electricity per year, which is enough to power 342 homes, according to the U.S. Depart- ment of Agriculture. A main benefit of biogas power, Akki said, is that it has a positive impact on the environment by gener- ating renewable electricity while also diverting food waste. The electricity produced is considered to have nega- tive net emissions because it actually removes greenhouse gasses. By capturing the methane and converting it to carbon dioxide, biogas facilities generate electricity while preventing methane from escaping into the atmosphere. "Our gas is actually net negative, it reduces the greenhouse gasses because the methane that the manure would emit, or the methane that the food waste would emit in a landfill, are not being emitted," Akki said. In addition, Hytone will receive tipping fees from waste suppliers, which now have to transport food waste to landfills in other states. The facility is expected to divert 20,000 tons of food waste annually. Complicated financing About 10% of the electricity Hytone produces will be used by the farm. The rest will be sold to the electric grid at a discounted rate through virtual net metering credits. While anaerobic digestion tech- nology has existed for decades, Akki said the costs to build a biogas facility are high. It has only recently become economically viable with the help of renewable energy credits and virtual net metering, she explained. "It's really important to build the business model to pay for it," Akki said. "You haven't seen or heard of a lot of these because it costs millions of dollars to install these systems." Connecticut has begun providing incentives to biogas power operators, such as virtual net metering, which allows a renewable energy system's owner to share the billing credits that are generated when the system produces more power than the owner uses. The excess energy is fed to the electrical grid. "The (agricultural virtual net metering program) really helps us," Akki said. "Electricity becomes a source of income for the project to pay for it. And number two, the food waste ban — that food waste cannot go into landfills — also helps us, so we get tipping fees for food waste to pay for the project. Those income sources justify the project; otherwise it'd be very difficult, and even then it's still pretty tight. That's why you don't see many of these projects." In July 2011, the DEEP imple- mented a new law that bans the disposal of commercial organic waste by businesses and institutions that dispose of 2 tons or more of these materials per week. Instead of land- filling that organic waste, state law now requires it to be recycled. Since the July 2022 closure of the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority's Hartford trash incinerator plant, most food waste is being trucked outside of the state, Akki said. Hytone Ag-Grid obtained loans and grants to help cover the approx- imately $5 million in construction costs, she said. In addition to revenue from tipping fees and energy sales, Hytone receives income from renewable energy credits. It also received a $3.7 million Rural Energy for America Program loan from the U.S. Depart- ment of Agriculture.

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