The Environmental and Conservation Issues Room
Methane can be used as liquid natural gas is used. Currently 20 large cow farms are producing 173 M kWh of electricity from the cow patties. Better than putting it in landfills. Unlike CO2, methane is a dangerous greenhouse gas.
Eliminating methane emissions from the agriculture sector would remove the largest source of methane emissions in the country. Methane emissions from the agriculture sector come largely from animal waste and food digestion in farm animals. Even more promising is the low price of most methane capture systems like digesters and the ease of which methane can be transported through existing pipeline infrastructure, negating the need to finance whole new pipelines solely for moving methane. Major cities, like Philadelphia, already use biogas emitted from wastewater in treatment plants to meet 85 percent of its electrical requirements. Beef producers particularly are herding not just your dinner, but up to 220 pounds of methane from just a single cow.
Rather than try and force people away from eating meat wholesale, covering and harvesting methane emissions from farm animals tackles both energy and sustainability needs. Large RNG projects such as Smithfield and Dominion Energy’s partnership in eastern North Carolina capture the amount of methane equivalent to removing half a million cars from the road. Existing pipeline infrastructure can also be used to transport RNG to communities connected to the grid. Furthermore, investing in RNG can be a key example in creating circular economies in industries whose waste has long taken up space in landfills and contributed to public nuisances, on top of its emissions.
Twenty large-scale dairies and livestock farms produced 173 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity solely from RNG. This is energy that can be harnessed to power homes and manufacturing processes that would have otherwise been shipped to a landfill or incinerated. Upwards of 50 million tons of organic waste either ends up in landfills or is incinerated in the U.S. every year. Clean energy advocates and energy producers might as well be burning money.
The scalability of RNG operations also means that RNG production is not limited to just rural, large-scale farms. Urban areas where grocery stores and restaurants produce large amounts of organic waste have also been targeted by RNG companies to combine smaller organic waste producers to make RNG viable in cities. Carbon offset programs can also be incorporated by investors and industry leaders who want to further decarbonize the setup time for RNG operations. Carbon offsets also allow for an initial capital flow to jumpstart smaller scale RNG operations that could fail to attract significant corporate investment, particularly in urban areas.
The ability of multiple communities to harness what many see as a smelly byproduct of farming to generate jobs, power their homes, and reduce emissions showcases that the U.S. is poised to capitalize on renewable natural gas. However, most government incentives are skewed towards wind and solar energy, which comes with their own set of land-use and intermittency drawbacks. In contrast, RNG is widely available wherever organic waste is left to decompose. It’s cheap to harness due to the plethora of different digesters for scalability, it doesn’t require that separate infrastructure be built for transport, and it also removes a large source of emissions from an entire sector of the economy.
Sourcing energy from local agricultural operations can slash transportation costs. At a time of unusually high energy prices, an unorthodox solution can be what consumers need.
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Originally Posted by RMNIXON
