Energy from pig slurry helps fight climate change

[Fledermaus]

STERKSEL, Netherlands (AP) — The 2,700 pigs on the farm that John Horrevorts manages yield more than ham and bacon. A biogas plant makes enough electricity from their waste to run the farm and feeds extra wattage into the Dutch national grid.

He even gets bonus payments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

As the world struggles to reduce pollution causing climate change, attention has focused on the burning of fossil fuels in factories, power stations, and vehicles. But U.N. scientists says farming and forestry account for more than 30 percent of the greenhouse gases that are gradually heating the earth. Much of that pollution comes from cattle, sheep and pigs that belch or excrete methane, a heat-trapping gas more than 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide, the most common global warming gas.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gjMI86Hl5pTmHFlmDK8POHxUvsjgD98HCRBG0

[BlooInBloo]

1. *gasp* You mean eating meat can HELP the environment?

Not like I was gonna listen to what militant evangelist vegetarian DUers have to say on the matter anyway, but still.

[NYC_SKP]

2. We have that in California, with cows, near Fresno, powers 1200 homes.

Scrubbed gas from Vintage Dairy is fed back into the PG&E Natural Gas pipeline network.

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/03/05/no-bs-cow-sourced-methane-power-in-california/

[Kolesar]

3. Oatmeal, potatoes, and beans have protein for your diet, too

And you can be assured that your diet has carbon consciousness if you get your protein that way.

[jwirr]

4. This is not new to those of us who lived through the 60-70s back to the

earth movement. Or to the Chinese.

[Fledermaus]

5. Its a booming business in europe right now.

Two New Biogas Plants Underway in Switzerland

Switzerland

Construction has commenced on a new biogas plant in Switzerland, in Münchwilen, Thurgau. Fed by an annual diet of 30,000 tons of organic byproducts of the meat industry and biogenic waste from hotels and restaurants, the output will supply 3,000 households with heat energy, or 3,000 vehicles a year with biomethane. The system has twice as much production capacity as the recently inaugurated biogas plant in Inwil, and will be built at a cost of nearly 25 million Swiss francs (USD 23 million).

Responsibility for the development rests with Erdgas Ostschweiz AG (EGO), which has gained the sponsorship of the cities of Wil, St. Gallen, Winterthur and Schaffhausen, municipalities of Flawil and Uzwil, and gas supplier Werdenberg Toggenburg AG for the project.

Currently occupying the site, an existing food recycling plant (Hunziker AG) will be rebuilt and expanded so that the fermentation process produces biogas, which can be processed directly into the gas grid. Gasorama reports that using meat produces more than twice the energy yield in comparison to the green fermentation. The plant is expected to be operational in two years.

Shortly after the Münchwilen ground-breaking ceremony, TMF Extraktionswerk AG and the community of Kirchberg announced planned construction of a biogas plant in Bazenheid in the immediate vicinity of the MBM factory. The proposed plant in Bazenheid, just 11.5 kms from Münchwilen, will have a processing capacity of around 80,000 tonnes of animal waste, more than twice as large as Münchwilen.

http://www.ngvglobal.com/es/market-developments/two-new-biogas-plants-underway-in-switzerland-02509.html

Biogas leader agri.capital raises €60M for EU growth

Agri.capital, Europe’s largest biogas company specializing in renewable energy generation, also entered into a €10 million ($13.6 million) mezzanine debt facility with London’s Ecofin, an investment firm in the global utility and infrastructure sector.

Agri.capital develops, owns and operates Germany- and Austria-based biogas-to-power and biomethane-to-pipeline facilities. It plans to use the new funds for organic growth, to expand its European presence and to make acquisitions. It has a portfolio of 32.2 megawatts of installed capacity.

Deutsche Bank Securities managed the private placement for agri.capital. Deutsche Bank Securities is the investment banking and securities arm of U.S.-based Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE:DB).

TCW, with €73.5 billion ($100 billion) in assets under management, led the round through its European Clean Energy Fund, one of the largest of its kind in Europe, closed in 2007 with €354 million ($481.9 million) from institutional investors in Europe, Canada and the United States. The fund provides capital for environmental energy initiatives including wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal and waste-to-energy projects. It is also used for projects generating carbon credits and tradable renewable certificates.

Agri.capital has a four-year framework agreement with Germany’s Schmack Biogas, signed in 2007. Schmack is building 15 plants with a capacity of 500 kilowatts for agri.capital, representing an order volume of €21.5 million ($28.6 million).

In 2007, Schmack announced it was building one of Europe’s biggest biogas plants, with 4 MW of generating capacity (see Schmack to build biggest biogas plant in Europe).
http://www.cleantech.com/news/4476/agricapitals-814m-new-funding-offer

German city’s biogas network a first: report

The German city of Lünen staked the claim of being the first in the world to build and manage a biogas network to provide heat and power for much of its 90,000 residents. Manure, plant waste and other green waste will be used to generate biogas that will be burned to generate electricity in a combined heat and power plant.

http://environmentalmanagementnews.net/storyview.asp?storyid=1003116§ionsource=s0

[JohnWxy]

6. Fledermaus, you should get on the WH contact page and inform the

Obama administration of this. They seem to be completely unaware of this, even though it's been around for years!

recommended.

[NNadir]

7. Just for reference, how many homes, exactly, do you think there ARE in Europe?

Most of this happy horse shit, or pig shit, is entirely missing a sense of <em>scale</em>.

There is NOT ONE "renewables will save us" bit of hype here in the last 8 years that has been cognizant of scale.

Meat is NOT environmental, never has been, never will be. It costs more climate change gas to feed a pig <em>and</em> to truck a pig than can ever be represented by this stuff.

I get the feeling that everytime someone of this bent looks at a turd, they think its the size of their gas tank. Wrong.

[Fledermaus]

8. National Grid says biogas could provide half domestic gas supply

Monday, February 2, 2009

National Grid has said half the country's household gas heating could come from biogas made from waste - providing a reliable source of energy as North Sea reserves run down.


The transmission company published a report today looking at the use of biodegradable waste streams including sewage, food and wood to make biogas that could be injected into the national gas pipelines.

http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/national_grid_says_biogas_could_provide_half_domestic_gas_supply

[Fledermaus]

9. Swedish biogas, current production, future potential, and benefits

Current production and future potential

The total annual biogas production in Sweden is almost 1.3 terrawatt hours (figures
from 2006). Several studies have concluded that the potential production in Sweden
is c. 10 times larger than this, or approximately 14 terawatt hours per year (Linné
and Jönsson, 2004). These calculations assume that c.10% of the agricultural land
can be used to grow crops for digestion in biogas plants. If the possibility of
exploiting cellulose-rich woody materials (to produce so-called bio-methane) is also
considered (Held, 2007), the potential production of methane from native raw
materials increases to as much as 100 terawatt hours per year. Thus, the production
of bio-methane appears to be a realistic means of replacing a significant proportion
of the total annual consumption of fossil fuels in Sweden (90 terawatt hours).

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Fledermaus/50

[NickB79]

10. "the potential production of methane from native raw materials"?

Ah, I was wondering what the Swedes were going to do with all that pesky forested land.

[kristopher]

11. Anytime you move from an existing waste stream to a farmed feedstock

you enter a new area where the emissions benefits of the process plummet.

[Fledermaus]

12. Its done with the left over srcaps from thier forest industry. The left over limbs & sawdust

[madokie]

13. We've been heating our home since '91 with waste sawdust

and have saved a shitpot full of cash in the process too.

[kristopher]

14. That is one of the waste streams I mentioned.

And using such waste streams is a wise measure. I think the above comments were related to your post #9:

Current production and future potential

The total annual biogas production in Sweden is almost 1.3 terrawatt hours (figures
from 2006). Several studies have concluded that the potential production in Sweden
is c. 10 times larger than this, or approximately 14 terawatt hours per year (Linné
and Jönsson, 2004). These calculations assume that c.10% of the agricultural land
can be used to grow crops for digestion in biogas plants. If the possibility of
exploiting cellulose-rich woody materials (to produce so-called bio-methane) is also
considered (Held, 2007), the potential production of methane from native raw
materials increases to as much as 100 terawatt hours per year. Thus, the production
of bio-methane appears to be a realistic means of replacing a significant proportion
of the total annual consumption of fossil fuels in Sweden (90 terawatt hours).

The profit motive looks strong enough to drive the use of fossil fuel intensive agriculture to produce feedstock for the process. How do you guard against that, or shouldn't we be concerned about the overall energy and CO2 footprint of the technology?

[HamdenRice]

15. I lived on a pig farm once in the West Indies powered by pig shit

I was visiting friends in Grenada, and the family I stayed with ran a commercial pig farm. It was small scale but profitable -- maybe up to 30 hogs at a time.

A development agency had sold them a small digester that composted the pig waste into methane and fertilizer. All their cooking was done using the methane from the digester. The fertilizer went into the orchard.

The livestock methane problem seems like a no brainer in some ways. I mean, when there were millions of buffalo, this wasn't a problem. Cows giving off methane shows that the cows are not fully digesting their food. Duh! They don't like corn, they like grass, like the buffalo ate.

This is closely related to a comment upthread by our resident, "I note with contempt..." naysayer. It simply is not true that meat is always uneconomical. Grain, vegetable and meat production each have their ecological niches, and the value of meat production when done in an environmentally sensible way is that it is less resource intensive than vegetable production because it can be done on land that would take a huge investment to make profitable.

More precisely, meat production is well suited to non-irrigated grazing land like prairie. Fortunately, in this country, with the depopulation of marginal prairie grain land which was never suited to grain farming, the idea of the great American buffalo commons is gaining ground. I just wouldn't limit it to buffalo. Cattle, sheep and goats could graze there as well, reducing greenhouse gases and eventually restoring the prairie eco system.