10/09/08 Chicken Manure

One of the most recent additions in the race to supply alternative energy is a biomass power plant; the world's largest in fact, now up and running in the Netherlands. This power plant supplies renewable electricity to 90,000 households by operating exclusively on&.chicken manure. Don't laugh. I know, it's hard not to, but when you think of the enormous number of homes being supplied with power and the fact that if the chicken manure which is being used by this electrical plant were to be spread out over farm land instead, the release of CO2 and methane would be astronomical. Then it becomes not amusing, but amazing. This biomass power plant plans on utilizing nearly 440,000 tons of chicken manure each year. Who knows, maybe we here in the U.S. will soon be able to put a large portion of our animal manure to good use supplying renewable electricity. And after a political election year, this one especially, we should have an extra large amount of manure to go around.