CT dairy farmers are turning cow poop into energy — and income
ELLINGTON — Once touted by locals as the “Milkiest Mile in America” for its proliferation of dairy farms, the back roads along this rural stretch of Tolland County will soon be used to haul a new product produced by thousands of cows: gas.
At Oakridge Dairy, one of a handful of farms that has survived a wave of consolations in the dairy industry, workers on Thursday were nearing completion of a massive concrete tank that will one day hold up to 2 million gallons of manure as it is slowly fermented into methane, the principal component of natural gas. That, in turn, can be used to heat homes, produce electricity and even power some cars.
The anaerobic methane digester under construction at Oakridge is the first of its kind in Connecticut that will be fed entirely by waste from cows, according to Seth Bahler, part-owner of the dairy who is overseeing the project.
As Connecticut’s dairy farmers face increasing competition from global suppliers, low milk prices and demand for organic products, however, experts say that dairies may come to rely on similar technologies to provide a steady stream of income while managing the waste their cows produce.
Already, a pair of dairies in Thompson and in Coventry are operating their own digester facilities fed by manure and liquid food waste to produce on-site electricity that is distributed into the state’s grid.
“It’s taking a waste product and turning it into energy,” said Bahler, a fifthgeneration farmer at the dairy his great-great-grandfather started in the 1890s.
Paul Miller, a retired dairy farmer from Woodstock and chair of the state’s Milk Promotion Board, said this week that the high startup costs of building a digester facility will likely prevent many of the state’s smaller dairies from entering the gas or electricity market. However, as the trend of consolidation has forced many family-operated farms to close or merge with their neighbors, Miller added that the remaining dairies must find “creative” ways to stay in business.
Connecticut currently has 88 to 90 working dairy farms, down from around 110 a few years ago, Miller said. However, the number of dairy cows has remained about the same.
“I could see us maybe selling methane instead of selling milk,” he said. “I guess I’m kind of optimistic that the whole industry is changing and we have to change with it.”
While the construction of digester facilities allows dairies to cash in on federal renewable energy credits for lowering their emissions — and to market their products toward similarly eco-conscience customers — some activists have criticized the approach as feeding into the state’s aging and leaking network of gas pipelines. Methane, a type of greenhouse gas that is even more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, exacerbates the impacts of climate change as it leaks into the atmosphere, experts say.
Earlier this year, proposed legislation to expand opportunities for the production of renewable natural gas — or biogas — drew opposition from the Sierra Club of Connecticut and other climate activists, who argued that gas produced by farm-based digesters should be limited to local use and barred from natural gas pipelines. Lawmakers never took action on the bill on the floor of either chamber.
“Ultimately, in order to address climate change we have to electrify practically everything,” Sierra Club chapter President Samantha Dynowski said Thursday. “So the things that can’t be electrified are where we should be using things like methane from anaerobic digesters.”
The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, which issued the nair permit for the digester at Oakridge Dairy last June, has previously supported other efforts to allow smallscale digesters on farms, including legislation allowing them to bypass the state’s solid waste permitting process.
“Ultimately, these facilities play a negligible role in the state’s energy mix, though generating renewable energy is certainly preferable to fossil fuels,” Will Healey, a spokesman for the agency, said in an email. “[Anaerobic digesters] are an important tool for waste management, including managing farm waste at on-farm ADs and managing food scraps at commercial scale ADs.”
For Bahler, construction of a digester at Oakridge Dairy presents an opportunity for the tens of thousands of gallons of waste produced every day by the nearly 5,000 cows and calves on his farm.
The liquid manure is held in large ponds before it is used to fertilize the fields where he grows corn and grass every spring and fall.
Once the new facility is operational in October, that manure will be fed first into the digester, where tiny microbes will break down the waste and produce methane, which will then be pumped into a separate onsite facility to be processed into natural gas. The remaining waste, which Bahler said retains nearly all of its nutrients, will then be used in the regular way — to fertilize his fields.
The digester is expected to produce enough natural gas to fill a 53-foot tanker truck every other day, Bahler said, or enough gas to power 780 homes through a typical natural gas power plant.
The $15 million project is funded by investors and the utility South Jersey Industries,
which Bahler said will transport the gas to a local injection site until a pipeline can be run directly to his property. Bahler said he will receive a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the gas, which he said is based on the number of cows on the farm and the amount of waste they produce.
As an added benefit, Bahler said the gas that is removed inside the digester is also the source of manure’s pungent smell, leaving a mostly odorless fertilizer to be spread on the property.
“It’s another income stream, but also there’s a lot of other benefits,” he said. “It will help us with our cow health, it will help with odor, it helps us reduce our carbon footprint which we’re trying to build our brand around.”
While Bahler declined to disclose the exact terms of his agreement with investors, Miller said the complex partnerships could pose problems with farmers, particularly those dealing with large corporations and Wall Street investors.
“I worry a little bit on our part about having control,” Miller said. “The more partners you have the less you get out of it.”
For Bahler, the project is the latest in a string of investments aimed at improving the efficiency of the 3,800-acre farm and lowering its carbon footprint. Those investments have included the purchase of “Fit-bit” style devices worn by cows to send farm workers data about each animal’s health, as well as the construction of a multimilliondollar robotic milking facility.
“It’s been kind of a hard industry to be in over the past 30 years,” Bahler said. “We’ve invested a lot of money into doing things efficiently because that’s how we’re going to stay long term.”