The energy industry is turning waste from dairy farms into renewable natural gas – but will it actually reduce emissions?
But the heart of their concerns is the question about whether or not renewable natural gas generated from dairy farms is truly carbon negative. The answer depends on how you tell the story of its production.
It’s on this flattering grading system that energy producers like Aemetis can earn avoided methane credits for every unit of energy produced from cow manure. The more they produce, the higher the payoffs. “Once you pay a cattle producer for their manure, you are effectively subsidizing the production of that manure,” said Richard Plevin, consultant and former researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. “You’ve altered the economics of cattle production.”
He found that revenue from methane capture alone could, in some cases, make up almost 40% of total profits for mid- and large-sized dairy farms in California. When revenue from methane capture begins to eclipse that from dairy production itself, the study warned, it could end up incentivizing farms to increase herd sizes to produce more manure.
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