Perry’s biogas SACPA presentation encouraging
All SACPA sessions have been postponed until further notice, including the presentation scheduled on March 19, where Chris Perry, President and CEO of Perry Family Farm, CKP Limited, and GrowTec, was going to present the topic Sustainable Farming: What role can Biogas Production Play in Reducing CO2 Emissions?
“Biogas production is basically an industrial stomach that digests organic waste including manure, landfill diverted organics, food processing organic waste,” Perry says. “All this releases methane, which is the fuel part of biogas. Due to the nature of farming, and animal manure, biogas production can be a great value add to sustainable farming in the right demographic.”
Perry stated that during the SACPA presentation, he was going to discuss the benefits of On-Farm Biogas in Alberta and the huge opportunity at a replicable scale to incorporate this technology. Perry says he was also going to approach the topic of being real about the challenge of overcoming regulatory cost and address the timely process this takes to happen.
Perry says that biogas production interests him because his family farm, the Perry Family Farms, is a 5000-acre irrigated farm that stores up to 30,000 ton of spuds every year. Biogas Production, Perry says, fits in with the vision of Perry Family Farm: to Grow, Live, and Be the Change.
Growing, Perry states, involving educating selves and crew about the best technology and practice they can incorporate on their farm. Perry says that to ‘Live’ includes investing, incorporation, and putting into place the best practices and technology and to not just talk about it. Perry states that Being the Change involves sharing learning and networking with like-minded individuals and companies to grow the circle of sustainable, resilient agriculture stewardship.
“We use a large amount of resources to do this while helping feed the people,” Perry says. “I feel an obligation to do what we can to be the best resource stewards we can as ag producers and building a biogas plant to offset our electricity use was a super fit for us.”
Perry says that operationally, Perry Family Farm is very happy, and the BioProducer Program has helped in the achievement of a breakeven project over the past four years, Unfortunately, Perry says, the program ends at the end of this month and the farms will end up losing money every month operating this facility unless the market for electricity or natural gas changes.
“There currently is hope that British Columbia is looking to purchase renewable natural gas (includes biogas) to fulfill their mandate to “green” their gas grid,” Perry says. “We sincerely hope to be a part of this in the future, or better yet, Alberta adopts a similar policy.”
Perry states that the single project creates over 4500 CO2e tonnes of offsets which are sold each year through the Alberta Carbon offset registry. This amount does not include diverting the methane released from manure into a biogas system, which would nearly double this number.
“Biogas production would ultimately be great for the GHG reduction and sustainable perception in agriculture,” Perry says. “The economics depend on the political environment of the jurisdiction. If there is a political will to support all the multiple benefits of Biogas, and this value is recognized monetarily then it can have a very positive impact on the ag industry, especially in area like Alberta and the prairie which have substantial livestock production.”
Currently, Perry says that the recognition and partnering of progressive customers like Frito Lay is a soft benefit that the business values and hopes to carry and even build going forward. Educating the public on the benefits of biogas, and the political will to add true value to biogas would enable the agriculture society to utilize biogas, Perry says.
Perry also emphasizes that there are significant opportunities to build out biogas based distributed generation project across rural Alberta in the agriculture sector with access to manure sources and organic waste diversion from Landfill.
Organic waste generated by over 3,000 food and beverage processing facilities, grocery stores, catering operations etc. located throughout Alberta, primarily Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary, Lethbridge and other large centers. Distributed biogas facilities throughout the province could utilize these organics and return the value nutrient back to the land, save landfill space and contribute to the province’s CLP objectives.
“Biogas is not a new technology; there are over 8000 similar sized plants as ours in Europe,” Perry says. “Our real opportunity is capitalizing on the manure sources across the prairies. Let use renewable resources when it makes sense to do so.”
For more information on Perry Family Farm and their investment in Biogas Production, visit: https://perryfarm.ca/ growtec-biogas.