In September 2026, Vanguard Renewables agreed to acquire Generate Upcycle’s North American operations, creating North America’s largest platform for turning food waste into renewable natural gas (RNG). Deals like this show how quickly the RNG industry is growing. According to a September 2026 report by Fortune Business Insights, the global RNG market was valued at $15.1 billion in 2025 and is projected to experience significant growth through 2034. These numbers show RNG’s growing value, but what exactly is it, why is it valuable as both an energy and environmental commodity, and why should electricity buyers keep an eye on it?
Renewable natural gas is methane made from waste instead of drilled from the ground. When organic material like food scraps, sewage, or livestock manure breaks down without oxygen, it releases biogas. To capture it, producers use sealed tanks called anaerobic digesters at wastewater plants, dairy farms, and food waste facilities. Raw biogas isn’t ready to use as is. It’s a mix of methane and carbon dioxide, along with moisture and other impurities. Once those are stripped out, the nearly pure methane that remains is RNG.
Because it’s chemically the same as conventional natural gas, pipeline-quality RNG can flow through existing pipelines and fuel the same vehicles and power plants without any changes to equipment. To generate electricity, RNG is burned in an engine or turbine, which spins a generator that converts the mechanical motion into electric current. It’s also valuable environmentally, since capturing methane from waste and putting it to work turns an emissions problem into an energy source.
In the United States, RNG isn’t new to the energy system. In 1975, a facility at the Palos Verdes landfill in Los Angeles County began cleaning landfill gas and blending it into the local gas utility’s system, making it the country’s first commercial-scale project of its kind. In 1994, the Environmental Protection Agency launched its Landfill Methane Outreach Program to encourage more landfills to turn their methane into energy.
Federal fuel policy provided the industry its next big push. The Renewable Fuel Standard, created by Congress in 2005 and expanded in 2007, began recognizing biogas as an advanced biofuel in 2010. In 2014, EPA went a step further and qualified most landfill and digester biogas as a cellulosic biofuel. That change allowed producers to generate cellulosic biofuel (D3) Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs), typically the most valuable credits in the program’s compliance market, which greatly improved the economics of biogas projects. Because producers earn these credits when RNG is used as a vehicle fuel, transportation remains its largest market today, powering trucks, buses, and refuse fleets.
Power generation is RNG’s second-largest market, and its ability to produce electricity on demand is why it matters now. Data centers and other large loads are seeking enormous amounts of power while facing long grid interconnection delays. RNG also appeals to organizations with emissions reduction targets. When it fuels the electricity a company buys, it can lower scope 2 emissions, the indirect emissions tied to purchased power, and it does the same for scope 1 emissions when it replaces conventional gas burned on site. Either way, the carbon reduction claim requires the associated environmental attributes being retired on the buyer’s behalf.
No single energy fuel source nor technology type can meet today’s demand on its own, and RNG is still a small share of total gas supply. Even so, as a dispatchable, low-carbon fuel, RNG is likely to play a growing role alongside other resources. For any buyer thinking about reliability and emissions together, RNG is worth watching.