It looks like our energy future is at least partly in the hands of cows, now that agribusiness giant Cargill has joined the manure-to-biogas gold rush. The company has just announced that its second biogas project is up and running at the Bettencourt Dairy B6 Farm in Jerome, Idaho. Using manure produced by the farm’s 6,000 cows, the biogas project is generating enough renewable methane to make electricity for about 1,100 typical homes. That’s just the latest installation in a trend that is seeing manure-to-biogas facilities popping up on farms across the United States like mushrooms after a rain.
This is Cargill’s third foray into dairy cow biogas in Idaho. The venture also boosts the company’s involvement in the global renewable energy market, because it will generate about 28,000 tons of carbon emissions offsets. It underscores how rapidly the renewable energy sector is growing from small scale experimental roots into a fully commercialized global market force that is chewing away at the dominance of fossil fuels.