Black Hills Energy Makes Sustainability a Priority in Nebraska

by Jennifer Peters

Black Hills Energy is more than just a natural gas company. Based in Rapid City, South Dakota, Black Hills Energy has been a leader in the energy field since 1883 and now serves 1.34 million customers across eight states in both the electric and natural gas utility space. 

Our mission of improving life with energy means we must be ready to make tomorrow even better than today. To us, long-term success is connected to sustainability and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

That is why we are committed to creating a cleaner energy future that builds upon our responsibility to provide the safe, reliable and cost-effective energy that improves our customers’ lives. 

By investing in the success of our employees, continually innovating, thoughtfully utilizing resources and keeping people at the core of our decision-making, we are dedicated to the sustainability of our company, communities and planet. Natural gas is an important part of our sustainable energy future. 

“We’re proud that we’ve reduced our electric utilities’ greenhouse gas emissions intensity by nearly one-third since 2005 and we’re well on our way to achieving our reduction goals of 40% by 2030 and 70% by 2040,” said Linn Evans, President and CEO of Black Hills Energy. “Additionally, we’ve reduced reported natural gas distribution system emissions by 27% since 2022.”

Here in Nebraska, our farmers consistently turn to natural gas to efficiently fuel their irrigation systems and grain drying facilities. The state is one of the nation’s leading ethanol producers, and this industry relies on natural gas to fuel the production process. As we move toward a more sustainable energy future, natural gas will be crucial in Nebraska and across the country. 

More and more we are focusing on sustainability through renewable natural gas (RNG), an ultra-clean and low carbon form of natural gas. As organic waste breaks down it emits methane gas, also called biogas, which can be processed and blended with, or used in place of, traditional natural gas.

“Progress comes in many forms, some as large projects and exciting innovations, while others look more like the steady, small improvements to run a reliable, safe and effective energy delivery system made by our team every day,” said Katie Fleming, Chief Sustainability Officer at Black Hills Energy. “No matter which form it takes, this progress wouldn’t be possible without the coordinated efforts of teams across our company and strong partnerships with our many stakeholders.”

While traditional natural gas comes from deep underground wells, renewable natural gas is derived from organic waste materials, such as food waste, garden and lawn clippings, animal and plant-based material, paper, cardboard and wood. The abundance of these materials allows for production of biogas in significant quantities.

We are involved in several projects and partnerships dedicated to taking additional steps toward sustainable renewable natural gas production. This includes working with the City of Lincoln to use RNG captured from the Lincoln Water Resource Recovery facility. Additional RNG projects in Nebraska include the Lexington Renewable Energy project, a waste-to-energy facility.

This facility takes biogas generated from a processing plant’s wastewater and purifies and upgrades it to RNG. We quality test the RNG and then inject it into the Black Hills Energy distribution system. As part of this project, we built a quality assurance gas testing skid and measurement equipment.  

We also support the Sarpy County Landfill Gas Project. A municipal landfill southwest of Omaha, the Sarpy County Landfill has 1.3 million tons of waste on 160 acres. In 2017, Black Hills Energy built a 3.5-mile pipeline to deliver RNG produced from the landfill biogas. 

Another landfill project we have been involved with is the Butler County Landfill Project. This large regional landfill near David City. We built the infrastructure to connect to our gas system, test the quality of the RNG, provide gas for the thermal oxidizer — which decomposes pollutants at a high temperature — and inject the renewable natural gas into our gas distribution system every day. 

Our commitment to sustainability extends beyond RNG projects into the homes and businesses of our customers. We share easy-to-implement tips and guidance to help reduce energy loss and maximize efficiency. We also offer a variety of programs and rebates to help conserve energy and lower our customers’ energy bills. 

Across our enterprise, we provided more than $8 million in energy efficiency rebates in 2023 to residential and business customers — like our HEAT rebate for Nebraska customers needing to replace their natural gas furnaces or water heaters — leading to annual energy savings of over 20 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and over 344,000 dekatherms of natural gas. That’s enough energy to power 1,632 homes with electricity and about 359 homes with natural gas for one year. 

For our customers that want to do more to reduce their carbon footprint, we introduced Green Forward, the first voluntary program in the state that offers an easy and cost-effective way to address the carbon footprint from natural gas use. The money that customers pay each month is used to purchase carbon offsets from projects that reduce or prevent the release of greenhouse gases such as forestry management, grassland and wetland preservation, as well as renewable natural gas certificates from projects such as landfills, farms and wastewater treatment plants.

Sustainability is at the forefront of what we do. We don’t want to be the preferred energy provider at the moment — we want to be the preferred energy provider now and in the years to come. That means taking steps, both large and small, to make our systems, services, customers and communities more efficient. Together, we are working to make tomorrow even better than today.