Renewable Energy and Agriculture: GHG Mitigation and Waste Management Strategy

Conventional world energy reserves are declining while global energy demand is increasing. This provides an enormous opportunity for the production of alternative energy such as solar, wind and biomass. Agriculture is an industry that can reap the many financial and environmental benefits of implementing renewable energy technology. However, there are also huge barriers to adopting new technologies to harvest non-conventional forms of energy. To bridge this gap, Natural Resources Canada is working on a project to help farm owners and operators to select economically and environmentally sound renewable energy technologies. Project like this one aims at creating tools and templates to assist farmers in implementing and integrating renewable energy systems on their own farms. This project also highlights the economical and environmental benefits of using and integrating renewable energy on farms. Two field studies are being carried out in Canada: one on a dairy farm and one on a hog farm. At these locations, manure will be used to produce biogas and power internal combustion engines. The system produces energy from renewable sources for heat and electricity while providing a manure management system.