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California awards $18.7 million to CalBio and Maas Energy to Reduce Dairy Methane

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The California Department of Food and Agriculture just awarded $18.7 million dollars to BAC members California Bioenergy and Maas Energy for a total of 14 new dairy digesters in California. Together, these 14 projects will cut greenhouse gas emissions by almost 2 million metric tons over the next 10 years. Even more importantly for the climate, dairy digesters avoid methane emissions, which are many times more damaging to the climate than the carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuel burning. Climate scientists have said that methane reductions are the most critical step we can take to address climate change.

According to the California Air Resources Board, the state’s investments in dairy digesters are also the most cost-effective of all of the state’s investments in reducing carbon emissions – on average, dairy digesters cut carbon emissions for the tiny cost of just $9 per ton, compared to an average cost of $75 per ton and some measures costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars per ton of carbon reduction.

CalBio and Maas Energy have led the development of dairy digesters in California and are leading the state in methane reductions, as well as providing carbon negative fuels and power. By providing carbon negative energy, they are also helping to meet California’s goal of carbon neutrality.

For more information about the grants and CDFA’s dairy digester program, click here.

LISTEN: NPR Story on Landfill Gas to Power in Los Angeles

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KCRW – NPR’s affiliate in Los Angeles – aired this piece on the City of Glendale’s landfill gas to electricity project, which will produce enough renewable electricity to power 4,000 homes while cutting emissions of methane, a climate super pollutant. BAC’s Executive Director, Julia Levin, is quoted extensively in the story, highlighting the urgency of methane reductions, the benefits of using landfill gas in place of fossil fuels, and the need for renewable power that is available when solar and wind power are not.

LISTEN: “Turning Trash Into Electricity”

Glasgow Climate Conference Underscores Importance of Bioenergy to Reduce Most Damaging Climate Pollutants

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The United Nations Climate Conference in Glasgow highlighted the urgency of reducing Short-Lived Climate Pollutants like methane and black carbon as the most effective steps to reduce global warming. As the head of the UN Environment Program stated, “Cutting methane is the strongest lever we have to slow climate change over the next 25 years . . . we need to urgently reduce methane emissions as much as possible this decade.”

In California, organic waste causes 87 percent of all methane emissions, which are 74 times more damaging to the climate than the carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuel burning. Open burning of forest and agricultural waste, wildfires, and diesel are the largest sources of black carbon emissions, which are 3,200 times more damaging to the climate than carbon dioxide on a 20-year time horizon.

On the positive side, reducing methane and black carbon benefit the climate right away. Reducing fossil fuels – while critically important in the long term – won’t begin to benefit the climate until 2050 or later. In other words, we have to do much more to reduce methane and black carbon to begin cooling the planet down right away. As Dr. V. Ramanathan, a climate scientist from UC San Diego says, reducing methane, black carbon, and other Short-Lived Climate Pollutants is “the last lever we have left to avoid catastrophic climate change.”

Bioenergy cuts methane emissions from landfill waste, wastewater treatment facilities, dairies and other livestock waste. It can also cut black carbon emissions from burning of agricultural and forest waste and from diesel. According to the California Air Resources Board, bioenergy cuts black carbon and methane emissions 98 percent compared to open burning.

For more information, see https://bendingthecurve.ucsd.edu/