Rural Electrification

Is Biogas an Answer to Clean Energy and Suburban Sprawl?

The rolling landscape of Northeastern Austria, where biogas technology has saved family farms.

Imagine a day when the crops planted by the farmer down the road aren’t grown to supply food, but to produce electricity. This scenario is still largely unimaginable in the United States, but it’s been a reality for more than a decade in Europe, where new technology provides both a growing source of clean, renewable energy and financial stability to family farmers.

The energy is called biogas, and it’s based on the principals of decomposition and fermentation. Biogas systems, also called methane digesters, transform organic materials such as manure, crops, or food waste into methane, a fuel much like natural gas. Methane can be used to generate electricity and provide heat, and even a moderately sized biogas system can create enough electricity to pay for itself relatively quickly by selling power back to the grid.

In Germany, Austria, and Italy, it’s estimated that more than 4,000 biogas systems are in operation on farms of various sizes, mini-power plants that produce electricity around the clock. Some farmers who once ran dairy operations have even sold off their milk cows and now produce crops expressly for the purpose of making electricity.

For five days in early June, a ten-person delegation from upstate New York and Vermont visited six farms in Austria, which is a European leader in renewable energy. The trip was organized by MWK Biogas North America Corp., the US affiliate of a German designer of state-of-the-art biogas systems. In Europe, MWK and its subsidiaries boast annual sales of between 80- and 100-million Euros annually. The Americans’ aim was to observe how this cutting-edge technology is being applied to create efficient and cost-effective green energy systems, and consider how that technology can be imported to the US.

“I had to go to Austria to see how prehistoric the United States is,” says Albert Floyd, a community leader who owns the general store in Randolph Center, Vermont. Like others on the trip, he returned amazed by the widespread and sophisticated applications of all types of alternative energy technology in Austria, and by its beautiful farms and pristine countryside, untouched by suburbia. “This country is run by the oil and automobile industries,” Floyd says of the US. “We have our heads in the sand.”