Food Scraps to Fuel: EPA-Funded Technology Successfully Traces Renewable Fuel Supply Chain in New York City
Published July 18, 2023
Renewable fuels, such as those made from corn or other biomass, offer a promising alternative to petroleum-based fuel in the nation’s adoption of clean energy solutions. Tracking fuel and the component feedstocks throughout the supply chain is becoming more important as renewable fuel producers align their operations to follow EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). Feedstocks are the raw or organic materials that are made into different types of fuel or oil. As feedstocks travel through the production chain and are converted into fuels, the origin of the feedstocks is often lost. For example, a waste feedstock will travel through multiple collectors or processors before it is produced into fuel; the ultimate consumer will have no way of verifying that the feedstocks were responsibly and sustainably harvested. This lack of supply chain transparency can make it difficult to prove that the fuel is in fact from a renewable source and can impact its capacity to meet federal and state regulatory requirements.
Photo by Akilah Lewis.
Veriflux is an EPA-funded end-to-end technology platform that provides data and tracking to address these issues and improve renewable fuel feedstock traceability. Veriflux records data from a feedstock’s point of origin to its transformation into renewable fuel.
The company received funding from EPA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I program which funds small businesses developing environmental technologies. EPA is one of 11 federal agencies that participates in the SBIR program. When co-founders Dani Charles and Scott Bernard started Veriflux, they found a natural application for their company’s mission in what EPA was implementing with RFS, which inspired them to apply for EPA SBIR funding. By conducting a research pilot to test its own software’s feasibility, Veriflux demonstrated a viable solution to renewable fuel traceability requirements.
In late 2022, Veriflux completed a first-of-its-kind pilot program in partnership with Waste Management of New York (WMNY) and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP) to trace solid and liquid food waste through New York City’s waste-to-energy supply chain. The pilot program launched in September 2022 and involved public and city haulers who, over the course of the four-month pilot, collected more than 1,750 tons of organic waste from close to 600 restaurants, cafeterias, public drop-off bins and other sources in Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens. The organic material (brown grease and waste food scraps) was taken to WM’s CORe® plant in Brooklyn, then processed into a feedstock called EBS®, an engineered bio-slurry. Next, the EBS® was transported to NYCDEP’s Newtown Creek Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility (WRRF). The facility co-digested the EBS® alongside wastewater sludge and converted it to Renewable Natural Gas (RNG).
Photo by Adrienne Fors.
Though the program included multiple waste types, a vast network of waste generators and many types of collections, Veriflux’s software successfully tracked the waste from its point of origin to the production of RNG. “Too often physical and digital supply chains are separated by challenges around data collection and sharing,” Charles said. “This pilot demonstrated that the technology exists today to change this, and that data can empower waste-to-energy supply chains that are traceable, renewable, and local.”
For NYCDEP, the pilot gathered valuable data that demonstrates how beneficial the co-digestion program is to New York City. The same information can also be used to inform a full life cycle analysis of the RNG made at Newtown Creek WRRF. “The data we collected in this study tells a clear story of how NYCDEP is involved in a circular economy. We are helping restaurants and community drop off sites manage organic material responsibly and we are making a local source of renewable, sustainable energy right here in New York City,” said Brendan Hannon, Acting Energy Program Manager with NYCDEP’s Office of Energy and Resource Recovery Programs.
The pilot also serves as a model for how other cities can similarly implement a data-driven approach to renewable energy. “New York City has shown the leadership needed to achieve a circular economy,” WM Organics Director of Business Development Dan Hagen said. “This pilot provides a model for how to track, incentivize, and meet landfill diversion and sustainability goals, as well as quantify the impact of renewable fuels on the climate.”
Photo by Adrienne Fors.
Though the pilot program was an NYCDEP idea, its initiation stems from the EPA SBIR funding Veriflux received. In fact, it was the EPA SBIR’s press release that led NYCDEP to first reach out to Veriflux and WM with the idea of the pilot. “Getting funding through SBIR was phenomenal for a number of reasons, but in the case of this particular pilot, it would not have happened without the SBIR program,” Charles said.
The 4-month pilot offered a learning opportunity for the team, as the program was a collaboration between federal, state, private, and nonprofit groups in one of the largest cities in the world. The team captured those findings in a recently released white paper on the pilot, entitled, “From Trash to Treasure: Insights from End-to-End Traceability Across the Organic Waste-to-Energy Supply Chain in New York City.”
“There was a question in my mind asking, ‘Is our adoption model going to be sustainable across New York City’s scale?’ and the pilot proved that the answer is ‘yes’. When we started to see the pilot’s data coming in, it was validating and fulfilling to know that this work can be done,” Charles explained.
Since completion of the pilot, Veriflux has been busy expanding across the U.S. and internationally. Today, it is actively tracking feedstocks for renewable fuels across the globe, helping to improve supply chain transparency and facilitate compliance with federal and state regulations.
“Veriflux is serving as a source of trust for fuel producers, providing confidence that the feedstocks they are sourcing are accurately represented and compliant with the regulatory frameworks within the areas in which they operate,” Charles said.
EPA’s 2023-2024 SBIR Phase I solicitation opened in June 2023. If you are interested in learning more about funded small businesses or the SBIR program, explore the links below.
- Research Project Results: Veriflux
- NYCDEP Pilot Announcement
- From Trash to Treasure White Paper
- Small Business Innovation Research program
Apply to EPA’s SBIR Phase I Program
Editor's note: Any mention of trade names, manufacturers or products does not imply an endorsement by the United States Government or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA and its employees do not endorse any commercial products, services, or enterprises.