I normally don’t blog about news or events outside the “polar context” but a story in the Globe and Mail from Tuesday’s edition caught my eye.  The story discussed the use of cow manure as means to produce “green electricity”.  According to the story a dairy farm in southern Ontario plans to start biomass operation later this summer.  In a nutshell, the dairy farm will use cow waste which emits methane gas as a by-product and the key ingredient to harness this new form of energy.  Apparently each cow is capable to produce enough waste-to-energy to keep three 50-watt light-bulbs illuminated constantly.  The initial capacity of the plant will be small approx. 300 kilowatts with the eventual goal to produce 1.3 megawatts (enough power to service 800 typical homes).

Here is a link to the article:

On the farm, a back-end solution to an energy crisis — Globe and Mail