Biogas: Perpetuating Myths

April 22, 2021

Biogas: Perpetuating Myths

April 22, 2021

Learn how energy from factory-farmed animal waste reinvests in Big Ag & Big Oil

Forty-one years ago, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Colorado celebrated the first Earth Day. In his speech, he provided a direction for environmental policy in the United States.

“Our goal is not just an environment of clean air and water and scenic beauty,” he said. “The objective is an environment of decency, quality, and mutual respect for all other human beings and all other living creatures.”

However, even when confronted with local and global environmental crises, policymakers have neglected Senator Nelson’s vision. Instead of mutual benefit, they’ve chosen further extraction and exploitation. They’re putting tens of billions of dollars towards commodity crops and industrial animal agriculture, perpetuating a dangerous and wasteful system. And now, we see more of the same in factory farm biogas.

Biogas from CAFOs is neither clean nor naturally renewable. It’s not a replacement for clean solar, water, wind, and geothermal energy. It does not solve the environmental degradation or the human and other animal suffering caused by factory farming.

This Earth Day, we must reject biogas in favor of energy and agricultural changes that can actually build a sustainable, just future.

Read on to learn why biogas is a toxic, greenwashing distraction.

Biogas in theory and practice
Biogas––turning organic waste into clean, renewable fuel––sounds like an attractive idea.

Biogas is a fuel produced by organic material, primarily animal manure, corn, wastewater solids, food waste, and fats, oils, and greases. In theory, this technology can help contribute to a more “circular economy,” where the outputs of economic activity fuel future inputs. That’s why some organizations have called biogas a potentially “ideal” source of energy.

For the few difficult-to-transition industries and processes, gas from food waste or municipal wastewater can help bridge the gap between the unsustainable present toward a better future.

In the case of our energy and food system––biogas is a dangerous distraction. It fails to close the loop, resulting in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, water and air pollution, and unnecessary public health risks.

Biogas is a fuel produced by organic material, primarily animal manure, corn, wastewater solids, food waste, fats, oils, greases

U.S. factory farms produce over 500 million tons of manure annually. Photo credit Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals

Biogas fails the environment

Agricultural sources of biogas result in environmental degradation and further deepen today’s climate and water crises:

Biogas encourages irresponsible fertilizer use, the source of hypoxic “dead zones” downstream of industrial animal and crop agriculture.
Biogas encourages farm-driven land-use transformation, a key source of water pollution and GHG emissions, and a key driver of mass species extinction.
Biogas encourages monoculture crop and animal agricultural production. These extractive parts of a food system account for approximately 92% of humans’ “freshwater footprint.”

Aerial view of a biogas plant. Photo credit Rudmer Zwerver/Shutterstock

Regardless of its fuel source––organic or fossil––biogas production results in its own unique environmental harms:

Biogas combustion creates higher GHG emissions. Gas is mostly methane, and methane combustion results in GHG emissions 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide emissions. Even if produced perfectly, biogas would still result in climate-changing GHG emissions.
Research shows leakage in 85% of surveyed biogas plants. In a survey of 964 biogas plants in the UK and Germany from 2011-2019, 85% of biogas facilities suffered leakage. If each biogas plant leaked 0.5% of its capacity, the result would be the carbon equivalent of more than 270 metric tons of carbon released into the atmosphere, per facility, per year. That’s the emissions equivalent of powering 46 U.S. houses for the entire year.
Biogas isn’t safe. Biogas leaks can result in an explosion, asphyxiation, or other chemical and biological hazards outlined by the biogas industry and experienced by workers and communities worldwide.

Even if produced perfectly, biogas would still result in climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions.

Biogas fails people
Biogas incentivizes factory farming at a scale that perpetuates human, animal, and environmental harms. And, it fails to protect local communities from the harmful effects of monoculture crop and intensive animal agriculture.

Factory farm biogas threatens human health, using excrement from CAFOs to create methane. This waste, containing more than 150 zoonotic pathogens, contaminates communities’ groundwater at levels that far exceed Safe Drinking Water Act limits. The land and air are also polluted, causing neighbors to suffer from respiratory and other ailments.

As Southern Environmental Law Center Staff Attorney Blakely Hildebrand argued, communities living near pig waste lagoons “have endured devastating pollution and health problems for far too long.”

And according to the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network, biogas is simply another example of a series of abuses caused by industrial animal agriculture.

“[Big Meat has] shown over and over: they will put your life and livelihood on the line––if it lines their pockets. Instead of finding a way to get hog waste out of our water and out of our lungs, these corporations want to turn a bigger profit by making it into [a] more dangerous biogas.

North Carolina Environmental Justice Network

Agriculture accounts for up to 92% of the world’s freshwater usage. Photo credit son Photo/Shutterstock

Biogas fails rural BIPOC communities
Public health threats associated with animal waste biogas disproportionately burden disenfranchised citizens. It particularly harms BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities, perpetuating structural environmental injustice under the veneer of sustainability.

For example, in North Carolina, a person’s chances of living near a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) increase if they are Black, Latino, or Indigenous by 39%, 54%, and 118%, respectively. According to Wisconsin Administrative Law Judge Jeffery Boldt, toxic pathogens in the drinking water resulting from CAFOs represent a “massive regulatory failure.” The distribution of these pathogens’ health effects reflects and perpetuates systemic racism, similar to the environmental injustices caused by the fossil fuel industry across the country.

Activist Elsie Herring holds a handkerchief over her nose and mouth to filter out manure being sprayed on the field next door. Support Elsie Herring in her battle against cancer. Photo Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals

Biogas expands fossil fuels, distracts from a clean energy future
Fossil fuel companies see biogas as a way to further entrench their interests and infrastructure at the public’s expense, even though it can never achieve the scale necessary to replace current fossil gas consumption.

Based on the American Gas Association (AGA) findings, biofuels could only produce 6-13% of the fuel necessary to replace fossil gas. Like factory farms, CAFO-based biogas operations are inherently inefficient, and they depend on government support to be economically viable.

Over the last 15 years, biogas has received billions of dollars through direct and indirect subsidies. These public investments in dirty fossil fuel infrastructure delay and undermine legitimate progress through greenwashing. AGA meeting notes from March 2018 outline how biogas technologies “can serve as a conduit to environmental organizations, thereby seeking to mitigate the opposition’s fervor against infrastructure expansion.”

Enabling factory farm biogas is unwise, and it’s a barrier to achieving a zero-carbon economy. Instead of supporting dirty, exploitive industries that cause so much harm, our government should invest in clean energy and sustainable agriculture efforts that serve the common good.

Over the last 15 years, biogas has received billions of dollars through direct and indirect subsidies.

Fossil fuel companies see biogas as a way to further entrench their interests and infrastructure at the public’s expense. Photo credit Real Window Creative/Shutterstock

Factory farm biogas disempowers citizens and communities
Both Big Ag and Big Oil use their political power to pre-empt community decision-making.

Missouri: Industry interests in Missouri used state laws to override local control over CAFOs, preventing communities from having a say in protecting their air and water quality.According to Missouri farmer Jeff Jones (a member of a coalition suing the state to regain local control), “We do have to defend the things we used to take for granted, such as local control, clean air and clean water. And if we just look away and think, ‘Oh, that’s not going to have an effect on us,’ well, it’s here now. [The CAFOs] are coming this way, and this is just the beginning of it. So if we can’t hold accountability to them, we are going to be polluted like Iowa streams and Iowa waters are now.”
Iowa: After eliminating local control in 2010, Iowa has seen a more than 1900% increase in CAFOs.
North Carolina: Reagan-appointed Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Wilkinson III argued CAFOs would not be in or near communities of color had they not been politically or economically disempowered.The judge then connected the welfare of animals to that of the surrounding communities, observing “animal welfare and human welfare, far from advancing at cross-purposes, are actually integrally connected. The decades-long transition to CAFOs lays bare this connection, and the consequences of its breach, with startling clarity.”
Across the U.S.: In California, Hawaii, Oregon, Massachusetts, and other states, the energy industry similarly used its political power to expand fossil fuel interests. According to University of California Santa Barbara Professor Leah Cardamore Stokes, these types of campaigns used state policy and elections to “short-circuit” the expressed opinions of local communities.

The issue of local control unites family farms, social justice, and environmental protection organizations, suggesting a path forward for people and the planet.

Biogas fails animals and all of us
Incentivizing our wasteful and extractive factory farming system and linking it to energy with biogas is harmful to animals, people, and the earth. We can produce all the food we need, with fewer resources, less energy, and less land––and without creating vast quantities of toxic waste––by investing in plant-based agriculture.

Biogas fails everyone who calls this planet home, exploiting animal suffering for energy and contributing to global mass species extinction.

“...animal welfare and human welfare, far from advancing at cross-purposes, are actually integrally connected. The decades-long transition to CAFOs lays bare this connection, and the consequences of its breach, with startling clarity.”

Judge Wilkinson III

In 2018, 124 million pigs were slaughtered in the U.S. Photo credit Farm Sanctuary.

Reject biogas in favor of just, meaningful change
This Earth Day, we can follow the advice of Senator Nelson and Judge Wilkinson by advancing a philosophy of mutual benefit and recognizing the interconnectedness of life. Our well-being is connected to and aligned with that of other people, animals, and the environment.

Instead of devoting time and resources to turning massive amounts of animal waste into a harmful energy source, prioritizing industrial profits over public interests, policymakers should focus on empowering communities and citizens who are challenging systems of oppression and abuses of power.

That’s how we can build a healthier and more just, compassionate, and sustainable system.