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70+ GoRaleigh buses are cruising on human waste.
With last week’s ribbon-cutting for the Bioenergy Recovery Project, Raleigh joins a small but savvy group of cities turning waste into public transit fuel—and, yes, we mean human waste. The move has been years in the making, sparked back in 2019 when the city greenlit an ambitious goal of cutting community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050.
At the same time, the city was also staring down another challenge: The equipment treating biosolids at the Neuse River Resource Recovery Facility—where the Bioenergy Recovery Project now operates—was due for a facelift.
This got the city thinking bigger—and greener. Raleigh Water Assistant Director Erika Bailey recalls in a written statement how her department worked on identifying “not only a solution to effectively manage our biosolids for the long-term, but also one that would provide environmental resiliency, producing a high-quality product to support beneficial reuse of the biosolids.”
They found the solution in an advanced anaerobic digestion process—aka a process speeding along the bacterial breakdown of waste—and the driver behind the Bioenergy Recovery Project. From there, the biogas gets upgraded into renewable natural gas, which now fuels more than 70 GoRaleigh buses.
Bailey said getting the system running took significant planning. The Neuse River treatment plant couldn’t just stop processing, meaning the city had to get creative with the install.
Not to mention producing renewable natural gas is pretty new to NC. “With this project, we have been charting new territory and working closely with our stakeholders to understand requirements associated with renewable natural gas production,” notes Bailey.
Over a decade later, though, and all their efforts have paid off. Per the city’s numbers, the Bioenergy Recovery Project is not just a step toward their sustainability goal, but a stride estimated to slash citywide greenhouse gas emissions by 11%.
And Raleighites are giving it two green thumbs up. “It… is very tangible in that you see the GoRaleigh buses around town as a regular reminder that we are taking our waste and turning it into a valuable resource that is fueling the GoRaleigh buses,” says Bailey. “It means the community is helping to contribute to fueling the buses with every flush!”
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