This article, by By Thomas Content, originally appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The Midwest can seize an advantage when it comes to developing homegrown energy on the farm, a new report says. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs says the region’s abundance of farms can point the region toward procuring more energy from waste streams—whether that means from grease and oil from restaurants, corn stalks and cobs left over from the corn crop, or manure from dairy farms.
“Cellulosic biofuels represent a potentially substantial economic opportunity for the Midwest and could also have a larger impact on the U.S. energy supply mix,” the report says.
Wisconsin’s a national leader in the production of energy from manure from dairy cows—initiatives that help farmers deal with a waste that’s linked to phosphorus pollution in the state’s rivers and lakes.
“The Midwest has an opportunity to harness the biomass residuals as a new source of energy and, in so doing, set an example for future energy initiatives that will hopefully someday be a feature of broader U.S. energy policy discussions,” said Rachel Bronson, vice president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Wisconsin is the leader nationally in manure digesters, also known as anaerobic digesters, but Pennsylvania and New York are catching up, according to a recent report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
There is still plenty of room for growth, with just about 10% of the Dairy State’s large farms using digesters to help manage their manure and produce energy, said Joe Kramer, a researcher at the Energy Center of Wisconsin in Madison.
More broad-based investment is needed, but action is taking place, said Gary Radloff, head of the Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative.
“You’re seeing these little pockets of interest as people realize you can spend an awful lot of money on managing waste by sending it to a landfill and a wastewater treatment plant, or put the money into a digester and do something positive,” he said.
Wisconsin is also seeing small farms adding digesters, with three Dane County farms teaming up on a regional “cow power” project that opened this year.
“Some people call waste the stuff that’s left over,” Radloff said. “But if we can take the things that are left over and convert them to energy or have them reused in some way, that’s how you get to sustainability: no waste.”
