Flyers Energy continues to remain competitive by not only embracing change, but also leading the industry in exploring new technologies. By utilizing and investing in renewable fuel technologies, we balance our emphasis on petroleum products and reduce our carbon footprint.
Flyers’ investments in renewable energy started with placing solar panels on top of their convenience stores in the 1990s. The company continues to be an equity investor in commercial solar projects in the western United States with more than 22 megawatts of production capacity and another 1.6 MW to come online this year.
Calgren’s ethanol plants in Pixley, California and Pratt, Kansas generate more than 100 million gallons of fuel grade ethanol, creating co-products of animal feed and corn oil each year. An ultra-low NOx gas turbine generator capable of producing 5,800 KW of electricity powers the plant with steam. With the help of a grant from the California Energy Commission, Calgren built a bio-digester that takes cattle waste from nearby dairies, captures methane to drive the steam turbine, and returns the remaining waste back to the dairy as bedding.
Flyers-backed Calgren Renewable Fuels (http://www.calgren.com/) is injecting carbon renewable natural gas made from cow manure directly into Southern California Gas Company’s (http://www.socalgas.com/) natural gas system. The dairy digester pipeline cluster will eventually collect biogas from anaerobic digesters at 12 Tulare County dairies, preventing about 130,000 tons of greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere each year, according to SoCalGas.
In 2017, Calgren introduced a “supercritical” biodiesel production facility which uses distillers corn oil from the plant along with brown grease, acid oils, and other low-cost feedstock to produce a renewable alternative to diesel fuel.
Flex Fuel or E85 fuel is made from a blend of conventional gasoline and ethanol. Since ethanol can be produced domestically it reduces our dependence on foreign oil. Also, depending on how the ethanol is made, it can have fewer greenhouse gas emissions when you take into account the upstream emissions – emissions associated with production and transporting the fuel. Flyers Energy is a proud E85 Flex Fuel provider and was a pioneer in the industry when it comes to this technology, by being one of the first retail marketer in the Sacramento region to install E85 pumps.
