US agencies aim to clean up cow manure climate crisis

The US government is to provide additional funding to an innovative project designed to capture methane from the country's cattle farming operations.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has signed an inter-agency agreement with the Department of Agriculture to expand the AgSTAR programme, which was founded in 1993 to support and encourage the development of methane recovery technologies across the agricultural sector.

Under the agreement, the government will provide a number of farms with almost $4m (£2.6m) over the next five years to accelerate the rollout of biogas recovery systems. The agencies hope that the money will be used to guide the construction of biogas recovery systems and to help with pre-feasibility studies.

The agreement outlines strategies for the provision of technical support on anaerobic digestor technologies, along with outreach and marketing campaigns to promote the technology among livestock owners.

AgSTAR has created more than 150 manure digester projects since is was founded, but has struggled to establish anaerobic digestion systems as a mainstream technology in the US.

Anaerobic digestors are widely regarded as an ideal low-carbon technology for the agricultural sector, as they serve to capture methane emissions from waste organic matter that can then be burned off to produce heat and electricity.

The technology also produces high-quality fertiliser as a byproduct, reduces groundwater and surface water contamination from manure, limits odours and improves local air quality, according to the agencies.

Existing livestock biogas recovery systems operating in the US already reduce methane emissions by about one million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually. But according to the two agencies, roughly 8,000 farms across the US could benefit from capturing and using biogas, a rollout that would reduce methane emissions by more than 34 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent each year while generating more than 1.5GW of renewable energy.