From: Issue 35 Categories: Energy/Tech
Cows, carbon and you
An Ontario veal farm generates power and heat from cow poop. A popular brand of oatmeal cookies is baked with green energy. Some say the time has come for low-carbon labelling of everyday products. But will consumers buy it?
It’s a cold day on the farm, and surprisingly quiet. Aside from the faint smell of cow manure, one would never suspect there were 2,700 young calves behind barn doors at the Delft Blue farming facility in Cambridge, Ont., each animal oblivious to the premature death that awaits it.
No mooing. No distress. Just calm, cute, milk-fed creatures.
Vegetarians might cringe. If red meat is on their do-not-eat list, then veal is taboo. Climate advocates, well, they just wouldn’t approve. They point out that red meat is generally about 150 per cent more greenhouse gas intensive than chicken or fish.
But the fact is Canadians like eating cows and, for some, the younger the beast the tastier the dish. Each year more than three million cattle are slaughtered in Canada for food. On average, we each eat 23.3 kilograms of red meat a year, according to 2008 figures from Statistics Canada. About 70 per cent more red meat makes it into our stomachs than poultry, though the numbers are gradually shifting to chicken and turkey.
Delft Blue certainly doesn’t consider its veal a sin food, but the company has taken several steps to reduce the environmental impacts and improve the ethical image of its operations. It turns cow manure into clean electricity that is sold into the Ontario grid. It captures waste heat from that process to heat water and keep its barns warm in the winter, significantly offsetting its natural gas use. LED lighting strips also keep the barn stalls bright and welcoming for their temporary guests.
“We’re constantly trying new things, and I’m always looking to make the whole farm operate more efficiently,” says Aron Hamm, who oversees operation of Delft Blue’s 500-kilowatt on-farm biogas system. “The heat costs on the farm are just astronomical, so we can offset that significantly. With this system, we’re looking at a payback of 5.5 years on our investment.”
It all starts in the stalls. When the cows poop, the manure falls through slats in the floor grates and is carried by gravity through a series of pipes to a central collection point. The manure is then pumped into a large holding tank—the anaerobic digester—and mixed with a combination of pre-pasteurized fats, oils and greases (FOGs) delivered every two days from local sources, and some dry materials such as crop residue and grass.
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