Turning cow poo into power is profitable for US farm
PLYMOUTH, UNITED STATES: For most farms, manure is a pungent problem. At Homestead Dairy, it smells like money.
The family-run American farm invested in a biogas recovery system which transforms cow poo and other waste into electricity.
Enough electricity, in fact, to power 1,000 homes, a service which the local utility company pays for handsomely. But that’s just a side benefit. “It works economically, but one of the main reasons we did it was to try to help take care of the odour control for the neighbours,” said Floyd Houin, whose family has owned the farm in Plymouth, Indiana since 1945.
“The land’s important to us also because we produce a crop for feeding cows. So we want to do everything we can to take care of the land and the water. We drink the same water as everyone else.”
Livestock farms typically store their effluent in open lagoons and the stench does not make them very popular with the neighbours.
The lagoons also have a significant environmental impact because they emit methane and carbon dioxide – major contributors to climate change – and can sully the groundwater if they leak or overflow during heavy rains.
Setting up an anaerobic digester – essentially a giant shed that uses heat to speed up decomposition – captures both the smell and the greenhouse gases.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that more than three million tons of greenhouse gas emissions were eliminated last year by Homestead and the 246 other US livestock farms which have installed biogas recovery systems.
That’s equivalent to taking more than 630,000 cars off the road.
There are about 8,000 dairy and hog farms in the United States which are large enough to make a biogas recovery system viable.
The EPA estimates they could generate enough electricity to power over a million homes and cut emissions by the equivalent of taking nearly four million cars off the road.
Biogas recovery is also being used to capture methane from landfills and sewage treatment plants and even at craft beer companies.
“The federal government is really committed to seeing progress in this sector,” said Allison Costa, program manager for the EPA’s AgStar unit.
“Widespread investment and adoption could help us make significant inroads in helping us address some of our environmental and energy challenges.”
The problem is the financing, Costa said. There’s a huge upfront cost and most utility companies in the United States won’t pay enough for the electricity to make the project appealing to a bank loan officer. — AFP