Cows usually get a bad rap from environmentalists. They burp greenhouse gases, fart greenhouse gases, they're the cause of much deforestation, and beef has one of the largest carbon footprints of any meat. Just when it seems that they can do no right, a California dairy farmer finds a way to make cows a source of "When most people see a pile of manure, they see a pile of manure. We saw it as an opportunity for farmers, for utilities, and for California."After years of hard work, David Albers is living the dream. Starting this week, his biogas plant will begin to provide enough natural gas to power 1,200 homes. Albers harvests biogas from liquefied cow manure, selling it to consumers through California power company PG&E. His company BioEnergy Solutions, funded and built the multi-million dollar cow-powered venture.
At one time, Albers was trying to figure out what he was going to do with all the cow crap from his dairy farm -- now he's making money off of it. How's that for efficiency? The process goes like this: the manure is liquefied and filtered, then it's piped into a giant digester -- a vat with a surface area equivalent to five football fields and it's 33ft deep. Inside the digester, the gas separates from the waste material and viola, we have methane!
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