»Poop-powered and then some

While organic dairyman Albert Straus fixes up the masses of manure into useable energy on his Marin County farm, the entire country of Denmark hopes to be fossil-fuel free by 2008.

California has invested $10 million in a program to explore the use of biogas, primarily through methane-digesting systems such as the one in use at the Straus dairy:

The tax incentives of the late 1970's and early 1980's encouraged the construction of approximately 18 commercial farm scaled digesters for energy production in California. Only 5 of those systems are running today and 3 of these are on pig farms and 2 of these are on dairy farms. Only 0.37 MW of power is generated from existing 5 digesters in CA although the total potential for animal waste to energy in California dairies is over 105 MW. Energy can be produced from different types of livestocks including dairy, swine, poultry, turkeys and sheep and lambs wastes in California. California dairies have 1.4 million milk cows and is the second leading state in total number of milk cows. There are 2,308 dairy farms in California with an average size of 602 cows. Currently, only less than 1 percent of the livestock manure generated in CA is utilized.