Spotlight on Biogas

Great Plains Institute

Biogas is a renewable energy resource that holds tremendous potential to help meet our future energy needs. As a versatile energy resource, it can be utilized as a feedstock for electricity and/or heat, a source of renewable natural gas, or as a vehicle fuel. Materials that can be used to produce biogas are abundant, especially in the Midwest - an area rich with livestock production, food processing byproducts, and crop residues. Agricultural production is not the only source of biogas production in the Midwest; wastewater treatment facilities, urban wood and yard wastes, and landfills also provide a feedstock source.

The Midwest is behind other parts of the world in deploying biogas technology. Other countries are gaining value from producing natural gas substitutes for transportation, heat, and other purposes. Based on operational experience abroad, the Midwest could produce more biogas from combining multiple organic feedstocks in the same system and developing centralized biogas plants. Such new production models would be instrumental in expanding biogas production beyond the large livestock facilities, where the technology has previously been associated.

Read the report (pdf)