AutoblogGreen

Last fall we followed Amanda Congdon's trek across America in a Ford Escape Hybrid and her videoblogging along the way. Once she landed in California, she snagged a deal to video blog for ABC News and also develop a show for HBO. In her latest video segment she visits a dairy farm in Vermont that's powered by dung.

Mark and Amanda St. Pierre began generating power at the Pleasant Valley Farm at the end of November, and have signed a deal to sell back power to the local utility since they only need about 1/4 of the power they generate for the farm. The video shows how they collect all the cow dung, put it in a digester and collect the methane. The methane is used to power generators and produce the electricity. The rest of the waste is pressed, with the solid part being used as bedding for the cows and the liquid going into a lagoon for further processing. The 1,500 cows on the farm produce 40 million pounds of milk and soon 3.5 million kW-hours of electricity annually. This is a prime example of the kind of decentralized energy supply that I discussed in my essay on the end of the energy monoculture last week.

[Source: ABC News]