Cows, Climate Change and Carbon Credits

from the WSJ

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The biggest coal burner in the U.S. thinks it has come up with a cheap way to start fixing its global-warming problem: cow dung.

American Electric Power Co., a utility based in Columbus, Ohio, burns so much coal that it coughs out 145 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year -- more than any other company in the U.S. That puts AEP squarely in Congress's crosshairs as lawmakers push to slap a cap on U.S. emissions of CO2, a gas contributing to global warming.
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In a deal to be announced today, the utility has agreed to pay a middleman to put plastic tarps over lagoons holding rotting livestock waste on farms. Decomposing manure produces methane -- a greenhouse gas that, ton for ton, is 21 times more damaging to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, scientists say.
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AEP is not alone in launching methane-capturing projects to produce carbon credits. Other companies looking for speculative credits in anticipation of a U.S. carbon cap have collectively birthed a nascent industry. Among the companies that have sprung up to make money off of that market is the one AEP has hired for its methane-capture effort: Environmental Credit Corp., a State College, Pa., company that was founded three years ago and has since contracted methane-capture projects on 34 U.S. farms.

Though the AEP deal is tiny in terms of the utility's emissions, it's bigger than anything Environmental Credit currently has going. Each of the roughly 200 farms will average about 2,000 cows; some farms will have pigs. Environmental Credit, which conservatively expects an average of four annual CO2 credits per cow, is investing about $25 million in equipment for the AEP project -- 80% of which it plans to borrow from a bank. Says Ed Heslop, the firm's chief executive: "We got our neck out on the line here that a market's going to develop."
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http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118178859139934868-hxfrRwOWXUamNWH4e0aaraQALyI_20070713.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

lol.

thereby converting the particularly nasty greenhouse gas CH4 into CO2 & H2O?

it litters the ocean floor to the tune of 400 million TRILLION tons, thousands of times the amount of oil reserves.

oh ya, global warming fears mean we can't.

As the OP article says, methane is more powerful GHG than CO2.
As for for methane hydrate, it is another form of fossil fuel.
Let's let sleeping carbon lie.

but the point is they are trying to game the system or at least the anticipated system by gaining credit for reduce the amount of methane through this farm project while doing nothing about the more overwhelming impact of all the CO2 their core business of Power Production produces.

The AEP-funded tarps will capture that methane and send it to flares, where the methane will be burned, emitting less-harmful carbon dioxide.

In the new math of the "carbon market," that emission reduction will translate into a wad of currency called carbon "credits." AEP is banking on using those credits to offset its obligation to clean up its power plants if, as AEP and much of industry expects, Congress imposes a carbon cap in the next few years.


So why not utilize the energy of the methane rather than flare it?? It has real economic value as an energy source.
Other companies are doing similar, but using the methane in fuel cells to produce electricity and other benefits from the waste heat.

methane is much worse.

First, they should indeed reduce their CO2 emissions, but as long as the methane is there anyway, it's also a good idea to catch the methane & use it for energy production, ending up with CO2 instead.

There have been pilot projects to try to capture hydrocarbons from sludge, and they haven't begun to pay for themselves. Way cheaper (and greener) to upgrade plant facilities in other ways.

Welcome to DU! Enjoy your stay! :hi: