Biogas production in United States dairy farms incentivized by electricity policy changes

Evan D. Erickson, Philip A. Tominac and Victor M. Zavala ()
Additional contact information
Evan D. Erickson: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Philip A. Tominac: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Victor M. Zavala: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Nature Sustainability, 2023, vol. 6, issue 4, 438-446

Abstract: Abstract The agricultural practice of spreading dairy manure on crop fields leads to widespread air and water pollution due to uncontrolled release of greenhouse gases, nutrients and pathogens. The associated environmental impacts can be mitigated by deploying manure processing (MP) systems that capture methane to produce electricity and facilitate nutrient management. Enacted in September 2020, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Order 2222 (FERC-2222) enables distributed energy resource systems to participate in wholesale electricity markets with higher selling prices than historically available to them. Using economic supply chain models, we show that market electricity prices create incentives to deploy MP systems. We highlight the role of FERC-2222 in activating electricity bioeconomies that mitigate environmental impacts resulting from manure spreading. We estimate this bioeconomy to contribute US$131 million in annual revenue for dairy farms and avert US$39 million in greenhouse gas and US$182 million in nutrient emissions within a Wisconsin study area. FERC-2222 incentivizes sustainable dairy manure management and renewable energy production—a dual benefit, demonstrating how effective policy can support sustainable infrastructure.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-01038-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natsus:v:6:y:2023:i:4:d:10.1038_s41893-022-01038-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/

DOI: 10.1038/s41893-022-01038-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Sustainability is currently edited by Monica Contestabile

More articles in Nature Sustainability from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().