Climate-Smart Dairy

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

There’s a lot of talk in the food industry about trying to reach carbon neutrality. One big step the dairy industry is taking to that end is by utilizing digesters to convert gases from manure into renewable fuel. Daryl Maas of Maas Energy Works says this process can have a big impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

Maas… “In the methane world, we create a significant reductions from baseline practices. So one cow's manure, if you put it in a dairy digester, creates about four to five tons of CO2 equivalent reductions in greenhouse gases. So one cow = five tons, which is roughly the same as one cow equals one car. So if you have a digester, (like) many of that Calgen digesters, maybe 3000 cows on a dairy, that's like removing 3000 cars from the road in greenhouse gas emissions terms. And that's a pretty impressive number when you get tens of thousands of cows, as this facility has done. California dairy cows in particular, and US dairy cows in general are very efficient in their use of land and their use of water and their use of feed. And so they're actually very environmentally sustainable compared to other ways of producing protein and fat and all the other things we do. So it's a good story, and it requires a lot of folks working together to achieve it.”

Maas has supplied the digesters for several dairies in Tulare County California which are connected to Calgren Renewable Fuels via pipeline.