HWN Suggests

We Can’t Let This Gas Greenwash Factory Farms

Big Ag has a big waste problem. Every day, factory farms produce millions of tons of manure and other waste, which threatens our air, water, and climate. And though a new industry has grown claiming it will solve this problem, it will actually do way more harm than help. Corporations — spearheaded by Ag and Oil giants — say they can turn all this factory farm waste into a “green” or even “renewable” energy source. At first glance, it might look like a neat fix: creating energy with waste, instead of fossil fuels. Backers say it’s a “win-win” — but they don’t tell you who loses.

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Featured

 Biogas or Bull****?

This report provides evidence that manure biogas will further entrench inherently unsustainable and unjust systems of industrial animal agriculture and fossil fuel energy for decades to come – all for methane reduction benefits that have been considerably overstated by the U.S. government, are inadequately tracked, and are insufficient to meet climate targets.

 The Truth About Bogus Factory Farm ‘Biogas’

Help us stop false solutions like factory farm biogas. It’s not clean energy and it’s not a path out of our climate crisis. We don’t need to rely on fairytales that paint fossil fuels and factory farms as heroes — we have the capability to rely on renewable energy now.

Articles of Interest

Brown gold: the great American manure rush begins

The energy industry is turning waste from dairy farms into renewable natural gas – but will it actually reduce emissions?

California’s Green-Energy Subsidies Spur a Gold Rush in Cow Manure

A lucrative state incentive to make natural gas from dairy waste is attracting companies from Amazon to Chevron

Cow poop could help us make clean(er) energy

Extracting methane from biogas could create fuel without fracking.

Factory Farm Biogas

Exposing industrial animal agriculture's green-washing of pollution.

How Dairy Farmers Are Turning Manure Into Money

These New Englanders have found a way to help the planet and convert more than 9,000 tons of cow waste annually into electricity.

Methane emissions are driving climate change. Here’s how to reduce them.

Agriculture is the predominant source. Livestock emissions – from manure and gastroenteric releases – account for roughly 32 per cent of human-caused methane emissions. Population growth, economic development and urban migration have stimulated unprecedented demand for animal protein and with the global population approaching 10 billion, this hunger is expected to increase by up to 70 per cent by 2050. Agricultural methane doesn’t only come from animals, though. Paddy rice cultivation – in which flooded fields prevent oxygen from penetrating the soil, creating ideal conditions for methane-emitting bacteria – accounts for another 8 per cent of human-linked emissions.

New research reveals factory farm manure biogas production harms environmental justice, fails to achieve methane reduction targets, and worsens consolidation

Manure biogas is incompatible with the goals of environmental justice and public health, generating additional concerns for communities living near factory farms, including increased ammonia emissions, water pollution, new pipelines and trucks, and more toxic air pollution than is produced by fossil gas.