Indigo Ag, the innovative leader and trusted partner in sustainable agriculture, and Red Trail Energy (RTE), a North Dakota bioethanol plant operator, announced a collaboration to source low carbon intensity (CI) corn to support farmers using sustainable practices and benefit from emerging clean fuels market tax credit programs.
Utilizing Indigo's proven measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) and remote sensing capabilities, RTE will work with Indigo Ag to measure field level carbon intensity (CI) and identify, enroll and verify farmers with the highest potential to produce low CI feedstock. Indigo Ag will produce the data required for tax credit compliance, including data collection, verification and analysis of eligible practices in GREET and other clean fuel calculators. This level of data collection will enable RTE to maximize benefits from clean fuel markets across the U.S. and Canada, starting with the 45Z tax credit in January 2025.
"Red Trail Energy is a leader in fuel decarbonization and we are looking forward to working with leading companies like Indigo Ag as our sustainable biofuels partner," said Jodi Johnson, CEO of Red Trail Energy. "Indigo Ag's science backed MRV capabilities will ensure we can receive all of the benefits from clean fuel market tax crediting programs and share those benefits with growers who are doing the hard work on the ground."
RTE will be amongst the first ethanol producers to take advantage of the Clean Fuel Production Credit, or 45Z, in January 2025, utilizing 2024 crops. 45Z will pay 2 cents per gallon for every carbon intensity (CI) point reduction below the minimum threshold, and will be the first clean fuels program to enable the generation of credits from lower CI agricultural feedstock in a meaningful way. Sustainable farming practices like cover crops or no till have the potential to lower ethanol CI scores by more than 20 points.
Indigo Ag's full stack of capabilities to generate carbon assets from row-crop agriculture has been in operation for six years and has helped some of the world's largest companies make progress against their climate goals following stringent policy guidelines for carbon credit offsets, scope 3 emissions and water conservation. These capabilities will be used to help RTE assess their supply chain and leverage the CI of their feedstock draw areas to help maximize 45Z tax credit generation.
"Indigo Ag has all of the capabilities in science, policy and technology to offer a proven solution that connects physical crops with sustainability attributes throughout the agricultural supply chain, ensuring real environmental impacts with the highest data quality standards," said Dean Banks, president and CEO of Indigo Ag. "We look forward to working with Red Trail Energy through the dynamic biofuels environment to ensure they capture all of the benefits available to them from low carbon biofuels programs."
