Digesters Help Dairies Reap Benefits of Reducing Emissions
Digesters are regaining popularity in the dairy industry as a way to reduce methane emissions and sell carbon credits. While the U.S. dairy industry has committed to carbon neutrality by 2050, there is a shorter deadline to meet the 2030 goal of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“In terms of animal agriculture, one of the largest focuses is on methane emissions,” said Patrick Wood, founder and general manager of Ag Methane Advisors. One of the tools to reduce those emissions is anaerobic digesters, and the number of on-farm digesters in the U.S. is approaching 400. Project failures in the early 2000s made farmers afraid to use them, he said. But that’s changed, and a lot of farms now want to install them.