St. Albans, Vermont, May 23, 2023  PurposeEnergy is proud to announce its commitment to build a new biogas processing plant in partnership with Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. The Saint Albans Industrial Treatment Center (“SAINT”) is a new biogas project designed to produce renewable energy through the responsible treatment of organic waste produced from food and beverage manufacturing. The project is located in St. Albans, Vermont and will serve a collection of Northern Vermont and Upstate New York-based food and beverage producers, including Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s plant in St. Albans, which will be piped directly to the SAINT biogas plant.

This latest project is an extension of the partnership struck between Ben & Jerry’s and PurposeEnergy over 5 years ago at the PurposeEnergy biogas facility in South Burlington, VT.

“Working on climate justice initiatives is an effort that requires all businesses like Ben & Jerry’s to step up and play a part if we truly want to implement impactful and meaningful change,” said Jenna Evans, Global Sustainability Manager at Ben & Jerry’s. “Today begins a new chapter breaking ground on this anaerobic digester adjacent to our St. Albans location. This project is crucial in furthering our commitment to our environmental and sustainability goals,” added Evans.

Other local companies that will benefit from the SAINT project include Casella Waste Systems, which will bring de-packaged organic waste to the project, Richard I. Green Trucking, a transportation company that delivers chocolate for Barry Callebaut, and Wind River Environmental, a hauler of restaurant grease trap and septic waste.

SAINT provides both an economically compelling and long-term sustainability solution for organic waste treatment and carbon reduction for key businesses operating within the local community. The project will reduce the load on local landfills and wastewater treatment systems, while also producing renewable energy for the local power grid that will benefit the surrounding community. When fully operational, SAINT will treat up to 50,000 gallons per day of food waste and wastewater, converting over 90% of the organic content into renewable biogas. In addition, the project will employ an average of 25 people on site during the approximately one-year construction period. Once operational, SAINT will employ 5 people locally and generate additional ancillary jobs in the region.

SAINT is the first new project to be committed by PurposeEnergy, after announcing the acquisition of the firm by Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners in March of this year. PurposeEnergy has one other project under active construction in Middlebury, VT, and a pipeline of additional projects in mid-to-late-stage development.

About PurposeEnergy

PurposeEnergy is an established US-based renewable fuels and biogas specialist focused on waste solutions for the food and beverage industries. Over the last 15 years, PurposeEnergy has developed, owned, and operated multiple projects that convert organic waste streams to biogas for use in industrial processes, conversion to renewable electricity, or refinement to Renewable Natural Gas (“RNG”). PurposeEnergy is a portfolio company of Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners.

About Quinbrook

Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners is a specialist investment manager focused exclusively on the infrastructure needed to drive the energy transition in the UK, US, and Australia. Quinbrook is led and managed by a senior team of power industry professionals who have collectively invested c.USD 8.2 billion of equity in energy infrastructure assets since the early 1990s, representing a total enterprise value of c.USD 28.7 billion and 19.5 GW of power supply capacity. Quinbrook has completed a diverse range of direct investments in both utility and distributed scale onshore wind and solar power, battery storage, reserve peaking capacity, biomass, fugitive methane recovery, hydro and flexible energy management solutions in the UK, US, and Australia. Quinbrook is currently developing and constructing some of the largest renewables and storage infrastructure projects ever undertaken in the UK, US, and Australia.

For more information, please contact:

Sean O’Neill
[email protected]
(917) 776-6155

Todd Hasselbeck
[email protected]
(978) 314-3012

PurposeEnergy LLC
P.O. Box 4345 Windham, NH 03087
(844) DIGESTER

Skip to content