Farmers across the US are leaving potential energy lying on their fields, and have the ability to reap billions of dollars in revenue by turning animal manure, crop and food waste into natural gas, according to two industry reports released this month.
Five years after the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) guaranteed more than $100 million to what’s billed as the “world’s largest manure biogas project”, the loans are in delinquency, which, along with operational failures and underperformance at such plants, has seemingly prompted an agency-wide pause on loan guarantees for such projects, according to The New Lede’s analysis of federal data.
By Shannon Kelleher
Industrial-sized livestock operations have long been known for contaminating the environment and mistreating animals. Now, amid growing government incentives to turn the manure generated at these operations into climate-friendly biofuels, there are mounting concerns that the efforts could make industrial farming bigger and more dangerous.