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Producing Green Energy
in Partnership with Farmers
With Dr. Rashi Akki, Ph.D.
Ag-Grid Energy is a company that partners with dairy farmers to produce electricity and renewable natural gas from cow manure and food waste. Ag-Grid converts waste to renewable energy through a sustainable and carbon negative process. Ag-Grid’s dual purpose is to create energy with positive environmental impacts and to support family-owned farms by reducing their costs and sharing profits.
In addition to generating green energy, Ag-Grid’s process diverts food waste from landfills and incinerators to create nutrient-rich byproducts used as organic crop fertilizer or compost. Ag-Grid brings together all of the pieces involved in developing a successful operation to include an anaerobic digester which provides oxygen free, optimal temperature conditions to support the natural process for the bacterial breakdown of organic matter.
The end products are biogas used to produce energy and a nutrient-rich “digestate” used as fertilizer and/or compost for the farm’s crops. Biogas is mostly methane and, like natural gas, has power-generating capabilities or can be processed into renewable natural gas (RNG, in place of natural gas) or as vehicle fuel.
We need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases – primarily carbon dioxide and methane, the latter dissipates faster but is 28 times more potent in warming the atmosphere. A major part of the solution is replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources, which emit little to no greenhouse gases. The Ag-Grid business model helps to sustain dairy farms by reducing their costs (e.g. provides electricity, heat and fertilizer) and providing a new revenue stream – the sale of energy by offering equity partnerships.
Dr Akki Ph.D. is the Founder and CEO of Ag-Grid Energy LLC which she launched in 2016 with a vision for carbon negative production of renewable biofuels from cow manure and food waste that would simultaneously improve the viability and financial stability of American dairy farms. Previously, Rashi worked at the DuPont chemical company, where she held a number of senior positions. Rashi is a member of the American Biogas Council and Mid-Atlantic Biomass Energy Council. She earned her Chemical Engineering B.S. in India and her M.S. and Ph.D. in the US.
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