Biogas

When greenhouse gasses are mentioned carbon dioxide is probably the first one that comes to mind. In fact, as a by-product of the burning of fossil fuels, it is the only one that has recieved any real public attention. However, there are two very common greenhouse gasses that for a given volume are far more damaging.

Decomposing manure releases two main gasses that cause global climate change: nitrous dioxide and methane. Nitrous dioxide warms the atmosphere 310 times more than carbon dioxide and methane 21 times more than carbon dioxide. Methane of course is better known as natural gas. The mixture of methane and other gasses derived from manure and other types of biomass is termed biogas.

There are two main sources of manure -- humans and livestock. The vast majority of the human manure is delivered by sanitary sewer systems to wastewater "treatment" plants which typically perform the bare minimum processing required to comply with the 1970 Clean Water Act. The smell around one of these public dungheaps will tell whether they are at all concerned with air quality.

Personally I am sick and tired of the oil industry's public relations ads about how they are developing technology that might possibly someday be useful. Biogas was first used in Assyria in the tenth century BC. I think its undergone enough "development" as this history shows. Larger and more efficient plants have been constructed over the last several centuries.

Some municipalities have incorporated biogas digesters in their sewage treatment already, and although I'm sure environmental concerns played some part in the initial planning of these projects the fact is that they more than pay for themselves in the value of the fuel they produce alone, as this waste-disposal industry article attests.

So here's a chance to think globally and act locally: Your city council won't let you have a septic system and they would rather tax you for the privelege of being exposed to TOXIC nitrogen dioxide than to upgrade to a revenue-positive green seventeenth-or-eighteenth-century sewage treatment plant. You know the E.P.A. has the authority to regulate toxic gas emissions ...

This doesn't require an elaborate feasibility study boondoggle. Siemens and probably half a dozen other European companies have off-the-shelf turnkey biogas solutions. I'm sure their engineers could help to get the specifications in order to open a project for bids. There may even be an American company or two, but my sense is that we just dont give a ... darn.