Dairy Farm Turns Cow Manure into Clean-Energy Gold
Ash Grove Dairy, northwest of Lake Benton, Minn., is adding another revenue stream by turning manure produced by the 2,100-head Holstein cow herd into renewable natural gas via a methane digester that has been operational for about 18 months.
A joint venture between Clean Energy Fuels Corp. and bp called Renewco owns the digester facility, says Christie Ings, Clean Energy senior director of renewable natural gas engineering and compliance. “We are in partnership with the dairy, though, so there are royalties that are paid to the dairy for the renewable natural gas produced by the manure from Ash Grove’s dairy cows,” she says.