Connecticut's largest dairy farm taps into energy markets with a plentiful supply of cow manure

It's a communal workplace odor, but for Connecticut's largest dairy operator, cattle manure is the odor of money.

In the analyzable concern of vigor markets, manure produced from a herd of 3,000 cows astatine Oakridge Dairy successful Ellington, Connecticut volition beryllium transformed into state sold successful New Jersey.

Oakridge and its partner, South Jersey Industries, broke crushed precocious connected an anaerobic digester that volition seizure earthy methane and different greenhouse gasses produced by manure. In the process, bacteria interruption down integrated substance specified arsenic carnal manure, wastewater and nutrient wastes successful the lack of oxygen.

The $12 cardinal project, which is acceptable to statesman operating adjacent September, volition crook biogas into commercial-grade renewable earthy state added to the organisation strategy of Elizabethtown Gas, a subsidiary of the Folsom, N.J., company, and its 300,000 customers.

Founded successful 1890 and successful its 5th generation, Oakridge volition invited the caller root of gross to defray precocious taxes and rising costs for vigor and labor, Chief Executive Officer Seth Bahler said. Local beverage markets were erstwhile dominant, but Oakridge present competes successful planetary markets, helium said.

"We person to nutrient it much cheaply, and Connecticut is not cheap," helium said.

Oakridge volition not beryllium lacking the earthy worldly fed into the digester. A cattle eats 100 pounds of nutrient a time and produces 15 gallons of manure, Bahler said. Oakridge Dairy volition inactive person plentifulness near to fertilize its 3,000 acres, helium said.

For South Jersey Industries Inc., the Oakridge task volition beryllium the archetypal successful a portfolio of dairy farms to interruption crushed successful its concern with REV LNG, a renewable vigor task improvement and mobile vigor services company.

SJI has different concern opportunities successful Michigan and elsewhere, said Dominick DiRocco, vice president of outer affairs. The state produced astatine Oakridge volition beryllium liquefied and transported by motortruck to customers successful New Jersey.

"There aren't galore dairy farms successful New Jersey," DiRocco said. "There aren't capable dairy cows to nutrient gas."

Agriculture accounted for 10% of greenhouse state emissions successful 2019, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The emissions are from livestock specified arsenic cows, cultivation soils and atom production.

Some environmentalists advocator for zero-emissions energy from sources specified arsenic upwind and star arsenic a amended prime implicit methane transported done pipes and into homes. Methane leaks and the extremity product, burning gas, person a greater biology impact.

Still, it produces overmuch little greenhouse state "than if you threw manure into a lagoon," said Matthew Freund, a co-owner of Freund's Farm successful East Canaan, Connecticut.

Freund's operates 1 of the earlier digesters, dating to 1997, helium said. It's a septic tank heated to the assemblage somesthesia of a cattle to replicate a tummy compartment and cod state utilized to supply energy for farm offices, a house, h2o and the digester.

Fort Hill Farms, a Thompson dairy farm, uses cow manure and edifice discarded to make energy sold to Middletown and New Britain. Part of a authorities programme authorized successful 2014, energy accumulation is initially utilized to trim a farm's electrical consumption, with surplus energy utilized to trim idiosyncratic else's electrical bill.

Kies Orr, a subordinate of the 4th procreation owners of Fort Hill Farms, said her father, who died successful 2018, began readying an anaerobic digester astir 5 years ago.

"My begetter asked however we tin beryllium sustainable and diversify to support america alive," she said.

More farmers successful Connecticut's tiny agriculture assemblage are showing involvement successful generating gross by turning cattle manure into energy. Although it's sizable, astatine $4 cardinal a year, agriculture is simply a tiny portion of the state's astir $295 cardinal economy.

Agriculture Commissioner Bryan Hurlburt said a fewer different digester projects are successful discussions, and authorities authorities enacted this twelvemonth streamlined the process for issuing permits.

Efforts down the readying for the anaerobic digester astatine Oakridge took 5 years, overmuch of it successful negotiations with the authorities biology officials said Foster, an Ellington Democrat.

Looking to necessitate lone a azygous permit, lawmakers this twelvemonth enacted authorities to accelerate the permitting process. Rules related to hazardous discarded and aerial contamination had antecedently taken the astir clip to triumph authorities approval, Foster said.

The fig of farms successful the United States with manure-based anaerobic digestion systems is small: 317 that trim methane emissions by collecting biogas from the degradation of carnal manure, according to AgSTAR, a collaborative programme sponsored by EPA and U.S. Department of Agriculture to beforehand the usage of biogas recovery.

Dairy farms relationship for the most, numbering 255, with the remainder connected hog, poultry and beef farms.

Digesters are a pricey concern and necessitate "quite a spot of maintenance," Freund said. They besides necessitate "somebody who's truly funny successful managing it."

"There are a slew of reasons wherefore we're not getting much digesters," Freund said.

AgSTAR estimates biogas betterment systems could enactment for much than 8,000 ample dairy and hog operations and could perchance make astir 16 cardinal megawatt-hours a year, displacing astir 2,010 megawatts of fossil fuel-fired generation.

"At the extremity of the time each husbandman would similar to bash it connected their farm," Bahler said.

---

---

©2021 Hartford Courant.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.