Founder project · St. Bernard, Ohio
Synthica St. Bernard: From an idea to a $75 million energy project
Sam Schutte began working on the concept in 2016 and went on to lead Synthica Energy as CEO and co-founder. Nine years later, Synthica St. Bernard entered commissioning as a large-scale facility built to convert difficult food and industrial organic waste into pipeline-quality renewable natural gas.
$75M
Project cost
Sam Schutte project record
190,000
Tons of designed annual feedstock capacity
~250,000
MMBtu of designed annual RNG output
May 2025
Commissioning began
Facility image: RETTEW project profile.
The project in one sentence
A complete commercial system—not just a digester.
Synthica St. Bernard brought together an urban industrial site, hard-to-process organic feedstocks, utility-backed capital, contracted RNG marketing, pipeline access, and years of technical and commercial development in one buildable project.
My role
I served as Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Synthica Energy. I helped originate the idea and began advancing the concept in 2016—building the commercial and development case and securing the project financing from UGI Energy Services that enabled the project to move into construction.
Public project records identify Synthica and a UGI Energy Services subsidiary as the owners of Hamilton RNG Holdings, the project joint venture, and identify UGI as co-owner and financing provider. I led Synthica as CEO through the July 2023 groundbreaking and the years of work required to turn the concept into a commissioned facility.
UGI project recordThis was team execution. The project depended on UGI Energy Services, RETTEW, Building Crafts, feedstock partners, local stakeholders, contractors, and many others who carried it from development into commissioning.
Sharon Creek Ventures is a separate, independent firm and is not affiliated with Synthica Energy.
2016–2025
A nine-year path to commissioning.
2016
The work begins
Sam Schutte helped originate the idea and began advancing the concept for a Cincinnati-area facility that could process pre-consumer food and industrial organic waste.
2017
Synthica Energy is founded
Sam Schutte co-founded Synthica and served as Chief Executive Officer. RETTEW was retained during the early development period.
2019
The St. Bernard site is identified
The industrial parcel offered proximity to feedstock sources, highways, and natural-gas infrastructure.
Development
The project stack comes together
The team advanced feedstock, engineering, permitting, interconnection, off-take, capital, and construction planning. UGI Energy Services became the project’s financing partner and co-owner through Hamilton RNG Holdings.
July 2023
2023–2025
Construction
Geopiers, excavation, tanks, structures, process equipment, receiving systems, and controls turned the industrial parcel into an organics-to-energy facility.
May 2025
Commissioning begins
The facility accepted its first food-waste delivery and entered commissioning.
See the facility
From receiving floor to pipeline-ready gas.
Process overview · RETTEW
How industrial waste becomes clean energy
A narrated walkthrough of receiving, depackaging, digestion, gas upgrading, wastewater treatment, and pipeline injection.
Facility tour · RETTEW
Fly through the completed facility
A silent visual tour of the St. Bernard site, process buildings, digesters, and supporting infrastructure.
Why St. Bernard is different
Four problems had to be solved together.
01
Built for difficult industrial organics
The project focuses on pre-consumer food and industrial organic streams—not manure, municipal solid waste, or municipal wastewater sludge. RETTEW says the design included pilot testing for challenging high-strength waste, including high-salt glycerin, so the process and controls could maintain digester stability.
02
Developed for an urban industrial setting
St. Bernard sits within the Cincinnati industrial landscape, close to manufacturers, transportation, and gas infrastructure. Advanced pretreatment and odor-control systems were important to making the facility compatible with that setting.
03
Commercialized as a complete system
A digester is only one piece of an energy project. St. Bernard required feedstock agreements, an industrial site, permitting, tested process design, project financing, construction delivery, a gas interconnection, and a route to market. GHI Energy, a UGI subsidiary, was named exclusive off-taker and marketer of the RNG.
04
Designed at meaningful scale
The facility was designed to accept approximately 190,000 tons of food-derived feedstock and produce approximately 250,000 MMBtu of pipeline-quality RNG each year. Synthica describes it as the first anaerobic digestion plant within 50 miles of Cincinnati.
What the project proved
Difficult energy projects are systems problems.
Technology matters, but projects become buildable only when the site, permits, feedstock or supply, product contract, interconnection, capital structure, construction plan, and operating model work together.
Progress in one workstream can be erased by a gap in another. The work is to identify those gaps early, sequence decisions correctly, and build enough confidence for customers, partners, regulators, contractors, and investors to commit.
Project answers
What to know about St. Bernard.
A concise, sourced summary of the facility, Sam Schutte's role, and the development work behind it.
- What is Synthica St. Bernard?
- Synthica St. Bernard is an organics-to-energy facility in St. Bernard, Ohio, designed to process difficult food and industrial organic waste and produce pipeline-quality renewable natural gas.
- What was Sam Schutte's role in the project?
- Sam Schutte helped originate the concept in 2016, co-founded Synthica Energy, and served as Chief Executive Officer while the project advanced through development toward construction and commissioning.
- When did the facility enter commissioning?
- The facility accepted its first food-waste delivery and entered commissioning in May 2025, after a development path that began in 2016.
- What did the St. Bernard project have to solve?
- The project had to align feedstock agreements, an industrial site, permitting, tested process design, project financing, construction delivery, gas interconnection, off-take, and an operating model as one commercial system.