Many dairy farmers are using methane digesters to produce electricity for their farms and their neighbors. Here is the story of one farmer’s experience.

What’s better than a cow that supplies fresh, wholesome milk? Well, how about one that also provides a clean and renewable source of energy? As owners of the Vermont-based Pleasant Valley Farm, Mark and Amanda St. Pierre are supplying one of the oldest sources of energy ever used by humans – sludge. As their family-run farm produces more than 40 million pounds of milk annually, it is also producing enough sludge to generate approximately 3.5 million KWH (kilowatt-hours) of clean, renewable electricity that they then send to Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS), the Vermont utility that set up this award-winning program to assist dairy farmers in turning manure into electricity. So community members can rest assured that their source of electricity is coming from a clean and renewable source. In fact in the United States, biomass energy (energy obtained from plants and animal matter) provides 15 times more energy than wind and solar combined. Now that’s better than any cup of milk…even chocolate milk!

Source: Working for Green