Canada’s Anaergia has teamed up with Japan’s Toyo’s renewable energy (RES) division to build one of Japan’s largest cow dung-to-energy plants.
According to Bloomberg, the plant in Kasaoka, a coastal city in southern Japan, will process 250 tons of cow dung per day and generate 1.2 MW of energy from biogas, enough to power 2,200 homes a year.
Agriculture and livestock are the biggest emitters of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Monitoring company GHGSat Inc. said in April that it had detected methane emissions from a herd of cattle for the first time using its high-resolution satellites.
Many technologies and systems are being developed to limit emissions from cattle, from masks that capture methane from burps to seaweed diets.
The Kasaoka power plant is Anaergia’s second project with Toyo. The first was a plant for processing agricultural and food waste into renewable energy in Yabu.