Green Wombat

photo originally uploaded by troymckaskle

A California startup founded by a dairyman turned entrepreneur has signed an agreement to supply up to 3 billion cubic feet of bovine biogas – methane extracted from cow manure – to utility PG&E (PCG). That’s enough cow power – 30 to 50 megawatts – to light up about 50,000 homes and keep a small natural gas plant running for a year. The deal between Bakersfield-based BioEnergy Solutions and PG&E of San Francisco highlights the win-win-win potential of renewable energy – and how global warming laws are creating opportunities for relatively low-tech solutions by companies far outside the Silicon Valley orbit.

In this case, cow power is good for the environment, the economy and entrepreneurs like BioEnergy’s David Albers. California is home to nearly 2 million cows and more than 2,000 dairies. Unlike the coastal cows enjoying the ocean view in the photo above, most California cows live on industrial-scale dairies in the Central Valley. Those operations produce enormous quantities of manure and thus methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases.  The resulting air and water pollution and other environmental impacts have resulted in stricter state regulations on dairying in recent years. Albers, who also is an attorney, has represented his fellow dairy owners in their tangles with regulators and environmentalists.

California, meanwhile, has imposed a mandate that 20 percent of electricity sold by investor-owned utilities like PG&E, Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) come from renewable energy sources by 2010. That’s making cow poop look profitable as source of really natural gas. "We found the perfect storm of opportunity," Albers told Green Wombat. "It’s such a great solution on so many levels, given the air quality problems in the Central Valley and the renewable energy mandate." Albers started BioEnergy Solutions last year and began negotiating with PG&E, which had just signed a cow power deal with a company called Microgy. Like its competitor, BioEnergy Solutions will install methane digesters at dairies, where manure will be pumped into covered lagoons. As methane is released from the decomposing manure, the digester will remove the carbon dioxide and impurities before piping the gas to a PG&E plant to be burned to produce greenhouse gas-free electricity. Albers says BioEnergy will install and operate the digesters at no cost to dairy owners while giving them a share of the gas sales (he wouldn’t say how much) and any renewable energy credits that result. "Even though there’s been a lot of digester technology out there, there’s never been a situation where the dairyman can share in the profits," Albers says.

The first digester will be installed at Albers own 3,000-cow dairy
in Fresno County this spring and he expects gas to begin flowing to a
PG&E plant by summer through existing pipelines. BioEnergy will
need to install between 20 and 30 digesters over the next
two-and-a-half years to supply 3 billion cubic feet of methane gas annually to
the utility at market rates. Albers declined to reveal BioEnergy’s
funding but said the company is self-financed.

There’s still plenty of room on the range for prospective cow power
pioneers.  The BioEnergy contract will supply just 10 percent of the 30
billion cubic feet of gas typically used by a single large
natural gas power plant each year, according to PG&E spokesman Keely Wachs.
The big question, of course, is whether renewable energy startups
will be able to step up and meet the ambitious targets set by PG&E and other utilities.