Beautiful Relationships: Local Biz Sees the Upside of Dung (in News)

For Cowpower, green and local energy is only a field away.

In one year, the manure from a single cow could produce more than 1,700 kilowatt hours of electricity.

Matt Dickson has a plan. A plan that, while still in its beginning stages (and not without its hiccups), has the potential to fuel a big change in local energy consumption. A plan that, if it comes to fruition, has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and produce additional income for local farms.

Dickson is the founder and manager of Cowpower, a renewable energy supplier that sells energy produced by local farmers to B.C. businesses, homes and events -- an operation made possible largely through the use of a single magic ingredient: manure.

The science of biogas

"The technology itself is called anaerobic digestion," Dickson explains. "Essentially, it's a waste-to-energy technology which takes manure from cows, and other food waste that would otherwise go to the landfill, or a wastewater treatment plant, and it converts that into a methane-rich gas. When that gas is pulled out of the system and burned in a clean-burning engine, it produces carbon-neutral electricity."

The process is remarkably simple: when heated to approximately 30 degrees C, and in the absence of oxygen, organic materials (such as manure, and other food waste products) are broken down by bacteria into biogas (mostly methane and carbon dioxide), which can be used to generate heat, electricity and fuels.

The materials remain in the digester for 21 to 30 days, at which time the gas is collected, leaving behind a "digestate" -- an odourless byproduct which is separated into solids and liquids. The liquids are used as fertilizer, and the solids can be kept as bedding material for livestock.

The system is almost entirely self-contained, and with the exception of wood, all organic material can be broken down for biogas production. Not only that, but the potential benefits are enormous: in one year, the manure from a single cow (approximately 40 tonnes) could realistically produce more than 1,700 kilowatt hours of electricity. A herd of 200 could produce nearly 350,000 kw/h -- or between $35,000 to $50,000 worth of electricity.

"I can't stress enough the benefits enough," Dickson says. "You install a wind turbine or a solar panel, and you'll get carbon-neutral energy. But when you have a digester, you're you're also looking at greenhouse gas reductions.... We're capturing that methane, and when you burn that methane, you convert it to carbon dioxide. It's a 23-1 difference in their warming potential."

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Beautiful Relationships: Local Biz Sees the Upside of Dung (in News)