The White House released a Biogas Opportunities Roadmap (PDF, 1MB) Aug. 1, highlighting the economic and environmental benefits and potential for biogas systems in the U.S.

According to the roadmap, biogas systems offer a wide range of potential revenue streams, jobs and economic development for communities, businesses and dairy farms. The systems work by recycling organic material — including cow manure and food waste — into valuable co-products such as renewable energy, fertilizer, separated nutrients and cow bedding.

To develop the roadmap, the White House worked with the dairy industry through the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, which was established under the leadership of dairy farmers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.

“The Biogas Roadmap will help stimulate the emerging biogas market in ways that could provide revenue-generating opportunities for dairy farms of all sizes,” said Jim Mulhern, president and chief executive officer of the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF).

The roadmap's strategies are entirely voluntary, not regulatory. “This validates the proactive and voluntary path the industry is already taking to reduce methane emissions, and provides direction for future actions and opportunities,” said Mulhern. NMPF sits on the Board of Directors for the Innovation Center.

“On dairy farms, digesters can increasingly be part of the solution to manure management challenges and enhance our ability to sustain our farms for the next generation,” said Jim Werkhoven, a dairy farmer in Monroe, Washington, and chairman of Darigold Inc.

Biogas systems could help the dairy industry, which contributes approximately 2 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, to further reduce its carbon footprint. In 2009, the dairy industry established a voluntary goal to reduce its carbon footprint by 25 percent by 2020. PD

—From National Milk Producers Federation news release