Liaoning dairy farm to embark on major biogas project

Liaoning Huishan Cow Farm, a 250,000-head dairy operation in northeast China plans to open the world's largest cow manure-fed power project in September.

General Electric Co. will be the company supplying four biogas turbines to the dairy farm.

The project deals with a few environmental problems in one swoop. As the dairy industry grows in China, it is generating more smelly and polluting waste. Booming electricity demand brings bigger challenges in transmitting power to rural areas, where many dairy farms already happen to be located.

Not to mention climate change. According to a recent UN report, the farm-to-table carbon footprint of the dairy sector accounts for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions globally. About half of the emissions from milk are methane.

"There is a huge potential in this," said Michael Wagner, marketing leader with GE Energy. "We are looking around the world to expand."

But biogas is nothing new. In China, household digesters have been in use for decades. And by 2005, there were already 1,500 large-scale biogas plants at livestock farms and industrial waste sites.

China's newest livestock digester will reduce piles of dung, yield fertiliser and heat, and will supply 38,000 megawatt-hours of power annually to the state's power grid, enough to meet the average demand of some 15,000 Chinese residents. It produces biogas, a methane and carbon dioxide mix emanating from manure, grease, sewage or other organic materials allowed to stew in an oxygen-free chamber.

The government has big plans to use biogas to meet some energy goals. China wants 300 million rural residents to use biogas electricity by 2020, in part from 10,000 large-scale biogas projects on livestock farms, according to a 2007 plan from the National Development and Reform Commission.

As with many other clean technologies, when China decides to encourage a sector, often, it succeeds. Wagner said the Huishan farm invested roughly US$1.5 million in total capital for the biggest project. The China project, he said, makes "economic sense."