More poop economics

Will it ever end? Apparently not (Tapping the latent power ...):

In a sense, it is the ultimate renewable source of fuel. Weather anomalies can kill off corn crops, calm the winds, obscure the sun — but through rain or shine, gusts or stillness, cows and hogs and turkeys spew forth a steady stream of manure, one of nature's richest sources of methane, a principal component of natural gas.

And now, farmers and entrepreneurs are recognizing that this immutable fact can yield a steady stream of revenue and profit, too. Slowly, but steadily, they are replacing the malodorous lagoons used to treat the waste with machines that can wrest energy from excrement.

The potential market is huge. Agstar officials say that at least 70,000 dairy and swine farms are big enough to support a commercial digester and could collectively provide enough energy to power more than 560,000 homes, while keeping more than 1.4 million tons of methane out of the atmosphere.

So, on average, 8 homes can be powered by each farm? That sounds expensive, but the article says that this will "transform the economics of rural america."

It is expensive (for the taxpayer):

Last year, for example, Hunter Haven Farms in Pearl City, Ill., paid $960,000 — half of it subsidized by state and federal grants — for a GHD digester that processes waste from 600 dairy cows. Hunter Haven then pipes its methane into a generator, and sells the resulting electricity to Commonwealth Edison for 3.5 cents per kilowatt hour.

Douglas R. Block, Hunter Haven's president, said the farm was saving $60,000 annually by using fibrous solids from the digester as bedding, and sells $12,000 worth of bedding to other farmers. And he anticipates at least $16,000 in added revenue from carbon credits, the tradeable units for reducing methane emissions.

Five Star Dairy, a 900-cow dairy farm in Elk Mound, Wis., anticipates a similar profit stream from the $1.2 million Microgy digester it installed in 2004. Lee Jensen, Five Star's general manager, said the Dairyland Power Cooperative pays him about 5 cents per kilowatt hour for energy, and that he is saving money on bedding and fertilizer.

"We're not taking any risk, the reduction in odors is huge, and we're powering 600 homes with 900 cows," he said. "You've got to admit, that's pretty efficient."

And now I'm just going to be mean: If we really want to transform the economics of rural America, how about doing it without subsidies?

And, of course, here is the subsidy mantra: subsidies allow producers to become efficient, sliding down that learning curve and when the per unit costs are low enough to be competitive with traditional [insert industry here] we'll lift those subsidies.

Comments

[Chris Ball]

The reality is more like this: subsidies allow producers to become less efficient, and when the per unit costs are back to the free market price of [insert industry here], we'll raise those subsidies.

Speaking of efficiency, I wonder what the thermal efficiency of his generator is compared to a proper natural gas power station. It seems like he might get more by selling the methane to a gas company for heating purposes. I mean jeez, it's Wisconsin!