Energy
The Detroit Zoo’s million dollar manure
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Zoo officials are proposing an anaerobic biodigester to turn animal waste into a bio gas that produces electricity.
Great Lakes Echo (http://greatlakesecho.org/tag/biomass/)
Zoo officials are proposing an anaerobic biodigester to turn animal waste into a bio gas that produces electricity.
Consumers Energy has selected four Michigan farms to produce electricity with anaerobic digesters.
Central Wisconsin has rolling fields, numerous dairies and potential new sources of energy.
The project has stalled, perhaps permanently, because of the withdrawal of the lead private investor and elimination of a federal mandate for ethanol made from wood.
In 2006 when a Minnesota group announced a $60 million biomass cogeneration plant, spot prices for natural gas topped $13 per million Btu. By the time the power plant began operating in May 2009, they had plunged below $4. Operators say they’ve stayed viable by cutting costs and upgrading efficiency.
It’s a crime in Great Lakes states to dump cooking grease.
It’s also foolish considering the value of leftover fat in the biofuels business.
Native American tribes in the Northern Lower Peninsula and Upper Peninsula are seeking to develop renewable energy, but a lack of money is impeding many projects, experts say.
Michigan tribes have a potential for wind energy and wood-based biomass, said Roger Taylor, the principal project manager of the Tribal Energy Program.
Echo recently covered the prospect of the Great Lakes states supplanting their steady diet of coal with biomass — that’s trees, crop waste and other plants that can be burned for energy. It’s an attractive but tricky plan. If done right, it could be a “carbon-neutral” fuel because crops can be managed to absorb carbon dioxide and the vegetation would theoretically decompose and release its carbon anyway. If done wrong, we’ll rack up a carbon debt from still-recovering forest resources instead of fossil fuels. If it wasn’t already complicated enough, try figuring out how biomass emissions ought to figure into Senate climate legislation released this month by Sens.
Some Great Lakes power companies are looking to biomass to lower their carbon footprint while keeping the lights on. But critics are leery of cutting down forests to power refrigerators and say biomass is only carbon neutral in a political sense.
The Great Lakes region receives 4 percent of its energy needs from biomass resources, according to a regional biomass energy program. But some estimates put the potential for biomass at 15 to 20 percent.