Palo Alto's utility considers cow power

By Kristina Peterson
Bay Area News Group
First Palo Alto's utilities went green. Now the city may go . . . black and white?

Palo Alto may become the first municipal utility in the state to use methane gas from cow manure as a source of alternative energy.

"Up to now we've been focused on green electricity and now we have an opportunity to look at green gas," said Utilities Advisory Commissioner John Melton.

The city council on Monday gave its nod for further exploration of the technology, which not only provides an alternative to fossil fuels, but also diverts harmful methane gas from seeping into the atmosphere.

PG&E will be the first utility in California to use "cow power" when a project with BioEnergy Solutions launches this spring, said PG&E spokeswoman Jennifer Zerwer.

The project, the first of two being planned, will produce 3 billion cubic feet of gas, or enough to meet the annual electricity needs of 50,000 customers, Zerwer said.

In harnessing gas from the state's 1.8 million cows, California trails only Texas and Wisconsin, "which makes sense, of course," Zerwer said.

At the dairy farm and cheese factory where PG&E plans to capture its gas, the cow manure will go through an anaerobic digester which will separate it into solids and liquid, Zerwer said. The liquid will then be diverted into a large lagoon and covered with a tarp to collect the methane gas. The gas will then be further refined to pipeline quality to render it "chemically the same as other types of methane," she said.

Read the full story