April 26, 2026. RNG Coalition celebrates the commissioning of Vanguard Renewables’ new facility at Oakmulgee Dairy Farm in Virginia as the latest operational renewable natural gas (RNG) facility in North America, continuing the industry’s march toward the 1,000-facility benchmark set for 2030 under RNG Coalition’s Sustainable Methane Abatement & Recycling Timeline (SMART) initiative.
The Oakmulgee anaerobic digestion and advanced depackaging facility co-digests dairy manure with food and beverage waste to produce pipeline-quality RNG. It is the third project from a joint venture between Vanguard Renewables and TotalEnergies initially announced in 2024, with international pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca serving as the gas offtaker to power its U.S. research and development and manufacturing operations.
“Oakmulgee brings us one stride closer to the 1,000-project benchmark our members are planning to achieve for 2030,” said Johannes Escudero, Founder and CEO of RNG Coalition. “Co-digestion projects like this one — which captures methane from a small dairy as well as food and beverage waste — are a sterling example of how we can get there.”
Co-digestion RNG projects typically combine animal manure and various forms of organic waste into a single stream, controlling and capturing the methane emissions that would otherwise escape into our atmosphere. The result is RNG with strong lifecycle emissions performance — and a model especially valuable for smaller livestock operations where blending feedstocks can help make a project economically viable, and for rural communities seeking private-sector alternatives to taxpayer-funded waste management.
Launched in 2019, RNG COALITION’s SMART is a vision to capture and control methane from more than 43,000 organic waste sites across North America by 2050. The RNG industry hit the 2025 benchmark of 500 operational facilities last June, five months ahead of schedule, and is now focused on doubling that footprint to 1,000 facilities by the end of 2030.