The Great American Manure Rush Begins (theguardian.com) 62
The energy industry is turning waste from dairy farms into renewable natural gas -- but will it actually reduce emissions? From a report: On an early August afternoon at Pinnacle Dairy, a farm located near the middle of California's long Central Valley, 1,300 Jersey cows idle in the shade of open-air barns. Above them whir fans the size of satellites, circulating a breeze as the temperature pushes 100F (38C). Underfoot, a wet layer of feces emits a thick stench that hangs in the air. Just a tad unpleasant, the smell represents a potential goldmine. The energy industry is transforming mounds of manure into a lucrative "carbon negative fuel" capable of powering everything from municipal buses to cargo trucks. To do so, it's turning to dairy farms, which offer a reliable, long-term supply of the material. Pinnacle is just one of hundreds across the state that have recently sold the rights to their manure to energy producers.
Communities around the world have long generated electricity from waste, but the past few years have seen a surge in public and private investment into poop-to-energy infrastructure in the US. Though so far concentrated in states with dominant dairy sectors, like California, Wisconsin and New York, Biden's landmark climate law passed last summer stands to unleash additional billions to support further development nationwide. The sector's boosters describe it as an elegant way to cut emissions from both livestock and transport; but critics worry that the nascent industry could raise more issues than it resolves by entrenching environmentally harmful practices.
Animal agriculture is the nation's single biggest source of methane, a greenhouse gas that climate scientists call a "super pollutant" due to its high short-term warming potential. The gas is released from animals when they burp, and through the decomposition of manure when collected in open-air ponds, a common livestock industry practice. But those emissions are also a potential moneymaker. Methane from animal waste can be purified into a product virtually indistinguishable from fossil fuel-based natural gas. Marketed as renewable natural gas (RNG), it has a unique profit-making edge: in addition to revenue from the sale of the gas itself, energy companies can now also earn handsome environmental subsidies for their role in keeping methane out of the atmosphere.
Communities around the world have long generated electricity from waste, but the past few years have seen a surge in public and private investment into poop-to-energy infrastructure in the US. Though so far concentrated in states with dominant dairy sectors, like California, Wisconsin and New York, Biden's landmark climate law passed last summer stands to unleash additional billions to support further development nationwide. The sector's boosters describe it as an elegant way to cut emissions from both livestock and transport; but critics worry that the nascent industry could raise more issues than it resolves by entrenching environmentally harmful practices.
Animal agriculture is the nation's single biggest source of methane, a greenhouse gas that climate scientists call a "super pollutant" due to its high short-term warming potential. The gas is released from animals when they burp, and through the decomposition of manure when collected in open-air ponds, a common livestock industry practice. But those emissions are also a potential moneymaker. Methane from animal waste can be purified into a product virtually indistinguishable from fossil fuel-based natural gas. Marketed as renewable natural gas (RNG), it has a unique profit-making edge: in addition to revenue from the sale of the gas itself, energy companies can now also earn handsome environmental subsidies for their role in keeping methane out of the atmosphere.
Sounds like... (Score:3, Funny)
We've finally hit Mad Max levels of technology (Score:5, Insightful)
"No energy, no town" Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Who run Bartertown? Master Blaster run Bartertown.
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Tina Turner used to give my boy parts a funny feeling watching her in that as a kid. Still the best Mad Max movie IMHO. They need to bring her into Furiosa.
What are the criticisms? (Score:5, Insightful)
So it sounds like it's a pretty "meh" solution to a severe problem, i.e. methane emissions. More of a distraction from dealing with the whole idea of animal agriculture, in the grand scheme of things. Getting more people into plant-based foods in a variety of ways in order to reduce animal agriculture sounds like a more efficient priority to me. Reducing subsidies for animal agriculture to create stronger incentives, i.e. companies can make more profits from plant-based when the market isn't distorted against it, would be a good starting point.
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Turning a very bad greenhouse-gas (CH4) into a bad greenhouse-gas (CO2).
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Rather than reduce the farms, I'll continue to do my part to reduce the farm animal populations....and keep eating them...
YUM!
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Har, Har, Har you're so funny. And brave too, it's so edgy how you put eating in bold.
Re:What are the criticisms? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it actually can offer a 50% reduction, how is that not worth pursuing?
Based on your response, it makes me think at least some of these complaints are actually feints from groups that don't want humans eating meat nor "keeping cows captive" for dairy production.
Re:What are the criticisms? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it actually can offer a 50% reduction, how is that not worth pursuing?
Based on your response, it makes me think at least some of these complaints are actually feints from groups that don't want humans eating meat nor "keeping cows captive" for dairy production.
Moreover, GP assumes that the technology will never improve.
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But seriously, weren't there a bunch of studies about how feeding cattle a little seaweed with their food reduced farts & burps substantially? Whatever happened to that idea?
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Whatever happened to that idea?
It doesn't stop cows from shitting. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Even if you feed them seaweed it still makes sense to pursue other technologies as well.
But one of the issues is... have you seen how much cows eat? Seaweed is not easy to cultivate.
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hehehheeeee you actually believe that!?
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I eat meat. I also eat a lot of plant-based food. I'm fairly adventurous about what I'll eat & I've been pleasantly surprised by many plant-based foods & foods with a lot of plant bits & pieces in them. Maybe not for everyone but the more people that can have the tasty choices available to them the bet
Re:What are the criticisms? (Score:4, Insightful)
Environmental justice and animal welfare groups . . .
If these groups cared half as much about the planet as they do about be seen as though the cared about the planet we might actually be living in a world where some of their desires had been accomplished.
I can't think of a more useful group of idiots for protecting the interests of existing and entrenched industries.
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This is why I despise the goon squad/marxists as well as trumper/fascist. Both are controlled by foreign agents that do not care about the planet or their citizens. They care about power.
Re:What are the criticisms? (Score:4, Insightful)
So it sounds like it's a pretty "meh" solution to a severe problem, i.e. methane emissions. More of a distraction from dealing with the whole idea of animal agriculture, in the grand scheme of things. Getting more people into plant-based foods in a variety of ways in order to reduce animal agriculture sounds like a more efficient priority to me. Reducing subsidies for animal agriculture to create stronger incentives, i.e. companies can make more profits from plant-based when the market isn't distorted against it, would be a good starting point.
As more people move out of poverty in the developing world, more of them are going to eat more meat (and dairy), so producing that meat as sustainably as possible is a worthwhile goal. If you like being a vegan that is your business, but nobody likes militant vegans.
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I'm not arguing for forcing anyone to eat or not eat anything. Post WWII, animal product prices have been skewed by government subsidies & preferential treatment. All I'm suggesting is that we make a return to pricing that reflects the true cost of the products.
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I'm not arguing for forcing anyone to eat or not eat anything. Post WWII, animal product prices have been skewed by government subsidies & preferential treatment. All I'm suggesting is that we make a return to pricing that reflects the true cost of the products.
I'll admit subsidies are contrary to the concept of free trade, but the alternative is we get our beef from the next cheapest place, which is not necessarily (or even likely) domestic. Maybe it is beef from Brazil and Argentina becomes dominant (law of unintended consequences). So in the end we lose farmers and become more reliant on imports - things subsidies are intended to prevent. Food and energy are subsidized because everyone needs food and energy, and it makes sense to try and be as self reliant as a country as possible. Lots of examples of how relying on others for anything important is not always such a great plan.
Not sure why my reply posted as AC, but it was my reply.
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WTF does a conversation about farm subsidies have to do with cleaning up our emissions?
Less farming means less emissions?
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Cows are slowly being fed a red algae that kills off the methane in burbs. [entrepreneur.com]
The real issue for ppl like you, is that you want a reason to kill off farming. This actually HELPS keep farming going.
This is a stupid as those that bring up nat gas stoves as being bad on the inside air. They will show all sorts of made -up numbers and ignore facts. Why are they doing this? To stop nat gas being piped to home
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Fans the size of satellites? (Score:1)
What does that even mean? Are we referring to cubesats, the ISS, or (as I expect) something in between those two extremes?
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That's no Moon...
(it doesn't say ARTIFICIAL satellites)
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Not new tech, but US market forces are weird (Score:5, Informative)
Very useful, it reduces the smell pollution. Gas is used for cooking, boiling sugarcane juice to make country sugar, molasses etc. The waste gets fully composed and produces organic fertilizer. But India is capital starved and farmers often cant even afford to build these simple structures. They would just dry the dung in cow pies and use it as fuel.
USA is weird. It has enough capital to build such things. But the value of the cow-gas is so low it does not pay back. The organic fertilizer was not in great demand either. The smell abatement should be a big winner here, but these industrial agri business has so much of clout local residents can't pass such ordnances. The well oiled state government lobby stops it cold.
Last time I looked the break even point was some 1000 cows. Farmers can pool the waste of their herds and build a plant. But for some reason, it does not get much traction in USA.
Re:Not new tech, but US market forces are weird (Score:4, Interesting)
The smell abatement should be a big winner here, but these industrial agri business has so much of clout local residents can't pass such ordnances.
I lived near a dairy for a while in California. The smell wasn't much of a problem, but the black flies were annoying.
Dairy farms do stink (Score:2)
You were lucky in CA. Maybe you were upwind?
Phoenix metro (Arizona) has also had a strong dairy farming segment for decades (intentionally built in the path of suburban development). When the housing finally arrived, a couple of dairy farms sold first and houses went up. In the AZ desert, you have to have large fans blowing on the cows to keep them cool in the shade, and the smell traveled.
The smell was strong enough for legal battles to be fought, and the other dairy farms had to shut down over a short tim
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Speaks volumes about ppl, not just America.
BTW, the nation with the most anarobic digesters? China. Number 2? America.
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It also featured an in-depth article from an originally-British guy who ran a major pig farm in South Africa for 70 years, turning the manure into methane and running a modified diesel engine on it. You can read the interview here [motherearthnews.com] for more info.
Not only did his investment i
To the moon! (Score:1)
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Promoting Russian lies [twitter.com] to curry favor with his right-wing backers.
Not really a new idea (Score:3)
People have burned dung for fuel since forever (and still do today). Personally, I'd just collect the poop, dry it, and burn it in the coal plants we're retiring.
OTOH, manure probably has lots of fixed nitrogen so perhaps a more valuable use is as compost. You'd think if that was cost effective we would have done it decades ago and yet we do not.
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OTOH, manure probably has lots of fixed nitrogen so perhaps a more valuable use is as compost. You'd think if that was cost effective we would have done it decades ago and yet we do not.
Circular farming is a thing that is very much practiced in some places. But the issue is what manure is and how it is used. It's a relatively low grade nitrogen source that is very much put on top of soil, or sometimes mixed in on the top layer. This is actually quite environmentally destructive and many countries have limits on how you do this due to issues such as fertiliser run-off and lack of penetration of nitrogen into lower layers of the soil. The alternative is injection into the soil, but that you
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By converting via anaerobes, it separates the Ch2 based cells into CH4 (which burns hotter and more efficiently), along with CO2, and leaves the needed elements for fertilizing in a sludge and effluent.
In fact, it would be far more efficient for India to clean up the waste on the street, convert to CH4 with digestor, and then allow the poor to have bottled Ch4, or electricity.
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Generally, it seems that manure is disposed of here (Fraser Valley) by spreading it on the fields, mostly hay or corn used as animal feed.
Though the natural gas company does brag about how much farm produced methane is cut into the natural gas supply as well. Might be mostly chicken manure rather then diary cow manure, I don't know.
Had that 35 years ago (Score:3)
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they're taking fertilizer out of the loop (Score:3)
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Yes and no. While circular farming is a big topic, the reality is throwing manure on farmland is a very low grade and environmentally damaging way of farming. In some countries there are limits to what you can toss over soil due to issues with fertiliser run-off, and in some countries the yields expected of a profitable business doesn't allow simply throwing shit on the field, rather injecting the ground with potent fertilisers.
There's a lot of effort at the moment looking at how to use manure effectively i
God,do I MISS the days that /. had intelligent ppl (Score:2)
Waste that goes through an anaerobic digester, will create gases, liquids called effluent and a sludge.
So, what is in the gas? Mostly the cell walls and other items turned into mostly CH4, along with CO2, H2O, etc.
So, what about the effluent? CONCENTRATED ammonia (NH4), insoluble phosphorus( P), Potassium (K+) amongst other elements.
The sludge? it is loaded with N, Iron, copper, micro nutrients, etc.
Now, when we talk pla
The answer (Score:2)
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
it gets better (Score:2)
In addition, animal farms regularly just put the waste into a pit and then it will drain into the aquifers, with loads of nitrogen, which then encourage bacterial growth in those aquifers (as well as makes the water taste terrible). By farms seeing value to turning their anima
NOT carbon-negative! (Score:2)
Carbon-almost-neutral I could accept. But the feed took fuel to produce (harvesting, processing, etc.) and transport (it doesn't get to the farm by carrier pigeon!). Only if you ignore the front of the process does the potential re-use of part of the product (mostly, the smell!) gets re-used. And the laws of thermodynamics apply - there are more losses at every step. Still, I could see the recovered methane getting re-sold into the chemical and natural gas systems, replacing a nominal amount of fossil produ
The rush (Score:2)
The Great American Manure Rush Begins
What, is it election season already?
Our poops! (Score:2)
Others and I poop too much due to IBS. We could be useful!