Hello –

This week, Friends of the Earth and Socially Responsible Agriculture Project released a new report: Biogas or Bull****? The Deceptive Promise of Manure Biogas as a Methane Solution. The report offers new evidence that factory farm gas will further entrench unsustainable and unjust systems of industrial animal agriculture and fossil fuel energy for decades to come – all for methane reduction benefits that are overstated, inadequately tracked, and insufficient to meet climate targets. See below for a summary of key findings.

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• A new report by @FOE_US and @SRAProject reveals how factory farm gas incentivizes the largest industrial livestock polluters to expand and diverts scarce public funds from true #climatesolutions. Read the report: foe.org/manure-biogas

Learn more about this report, as well as a recently published report from Food & Water Watch that maps extensive industry investments in factory farm gas, at a webinar on Thursday, February 29 at 1PM ET. REGISTER HERE. 

Thank you!

Chloe

Key findings from the report include:  

• Manure biogas is incompatible with the goals of environmental justice and public health, generating additional concerns for communities living near factory farms, including increased ammonia emissions, water pollution, new pipelines and trucks, and more toxic air pollution than is produced by fossil gas. 
• Herd sizes at dairy facilities with digesters grew 3.7% year-over-year, which is 24 times the growth rate for overall dairy herd sizes in the states covered by our data set.  
• Installing dairy digesters will fall far short of the reductions needed to slash agricultural methane emissions in line with the Biden administration’s commitment to the Global Methane Pledge, but reducing herd sizes by 20% and implementing feasible alternative manure management strategies on 1,500 dairy farms could yield 55% of the reductions that are needed to slash agricultural methane emissions in alignment with the Global Methane Pledge.  
• Manure gas digesters are an expensive, inefficient approach to reducing GHG emissions; other strategies could reduce emissions at a third of the cost.  
• Data collection and disclosure from livestock facilities with digesters is wholly insufficient to accurately measure methane emissions.  
• Incentivizing manure biogas production increases the competitive advantage for large-scale producers, contributes to industry consolidation, and crowds out funding for truly effective conservation practices.  

The report concludes with policy recommendations focused on redirecting resources currently supporting manure biogas to more cost-effective methane reduction solutions that do not exacerbate environmental injustice and industry consolidation. We argue that instead, policies should support a just transition away from factory farming to regenerative agriculture and away from fossil fuels to truly renewable energy.   

Thanks!

Shaye Skiff

Senior Press Officer

She/her

Friends of the Earth/Friends of the Earth Action

(202) 222-0723

kskiff@foe.org