JBS SA has teamed with GreenGasUSA to turn animal waste into marketable fuel as the world’s largest meat producer seeks to reduce harmful emissions. 

Under the agreement, GreenGasUSA will initially collect, process and trade biogas — a fuel made of methane, a potent planet warming gas — at two beef plants in Nebraska and Utah as well as at a chicken plant in South Carolina. The projects are expected to be completed in 2025, JBS said in a statement. 

JBS, whose operations span six continents, has been under increased scrutiny over its environmental impact as the Brazilian company seeks US approval to trade its shares in New York. The livestock industry is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, including through methane vented from manure lagoons. 

Capturing methane and processing it into fuel to power cars and factories are seen as key steps to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5C by 2050. Methane is over 80 times more harmful than carbon dioxide during its first 20 years when released directly into the atmosphere, but it has a lower impact than coal and oil when burned to generate energy.

The agreement with GreenGasUSA is viewed as a first step of a “long-term partnership to significantly improve the ability to capture methane and generate” biogas, according to Jason Weller, JBS’s chief sustainability officer. 

While the meat giant since 2019 has initiated more than 25 projects to eliminate or capture methane emissions from organic waste lagoons, natural gas generation “is not a core competency,” and productive capacity can be increased with a partner with expertise, Weller said by email.

GreenGasUSA will be “upgrading facilities, enhancing generation capacity, improving operational efficiency, and covering some of JBS’s largest lagoons that had yet to be completed,” he said.

South Carolina-based GreenGasUSA has also announced methane-capturing partnerships with chicken producers Wayne-Sanderson Farms, a joint venture between Cargill Inc. and Continental Grain Co., and Perdue Farms Inc. The company is controlled by IFM Investors Pty Ltd., a fund manager owned by Australian pension funds. 

JBS has pledged to slash greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2040, though it said achieving that goal will depend on numerous factors outside its control, including changes in legislation and new technologies. The company has also committed to eliminate illegal deforestation from its Brazilian supply chain — including the suppliers of the ranchers it buys cattle from — by 2025.