Canadian company Anaergia is working with Japanese real estate group Toyo’s renewable energy division on building a large cow manure power plant in Japan. As the name suggests, a cow manure power plant converts cow manure from animal husbandry to biofuel in the hope of transforming the significant greenhouse gas methane into new energy.
Anaergia has established more than 1,700 agricultural waste plants around the world thus far, and is now working with Toyo on plant design and installation in Kasaoka of Okayama Prefecture. As pointed out by Anaergia, the anaerobic digestion plant will process 250 tons of cow manure each day, and generate approximately 1.2MW of energy from the biogas that would provide power for 2,200 households each year. The operation is expected to reduce roughly 13.5K tons of carbon dioxide emission each year, which is equivalent to a reduction of 2,900 vehicles on the road.
This is the second cooperation between Anaergia and Toyo, who had previously established a biofuel plant in Yabu of Hyogo Prefecture together that primarily converts agricultural and food waste into renewable energy, while the Kasaoka plant mainly processes methane. Despite being the second largest greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, methane impacts global warming 84 times more than that of carbon dioxide over a 20-year span, and many scientists are also working to achieve less emission among cows, such as feeding algae.
GHGSat Inc. pointed out in April that the level of methane emission from the cows of barns in California was detected through satellite for the first time, which is yet another bad news under the continuous aggravation of global climate change.
(Cover photo source: pixabay)