Rupert dairy considered for a second renewable energy source
By Julie Pence, Ag Weekly correspondent
Tuesday, February 6, 2007 5:00 PM CST
BOISE, Idaho n President Bush insists the nation must reduce its reliance on foreign oil. Meanwhile, the world’s leading panel of climate scientists say they are 90 percent sure the burning of fossil-fuels are at the root of global warming.
One solution: The United States, with 5 percent of the world’s population that emits 25 percent of greenhouse gases from coal and oil burning, could lead the world in a prompt and sustained move toward developing clean, renewable sources of energy.
One technology that does this, albeit in its infancy, is emerging at Utah State University. A professor and researcher at the university, Conly Hansen, spoke briefly about this unique renewable energy source in Boise at the 7th annual Harvesting Clean Energy Conference.
The speech was brief, he said, because, “It is all in the research stage. We’re still trying to find out what works and what doesn’t, and at this point, we don’t want people to expect too much.”
The project, which Hansen predicts to be a perfect fit someday for the Whitesides Dairy near Rupert, involves taking oil from algae and converting it to biodiesel fuel. Algae, often referred to as pond scum, can produce up to 10,000 gallons of oil per acre and can be grown almost anywhere.
Biodiesel is a clean and carbon-dioxide-neutral fuel that is becoming more popular, but most of the current product comes from soybean and corn oil. As demand grows, so does the price of soybeans and corn. People and animals rely on soybean and corn as a food commodity, eventually causing competition between commodities and growing enough product. Meeting this demand would require the world to use virtually all of its arable land, said Hansen’s fellow researcher Lance Seefeldt.
“There are several options for solving the world’s energy problem, but at this point, none of them are realistically viable for long-term use, Seefeldt said. “It is obvious we need to do more research.”
The Whitesides Dairy, which now has 6,300 dairy cows, has been for a number of years a research center for biogas production. Idaho Falls-based Intrepid Technologies and Resources and USU have driven that technology and are close to actually selling natural gas generated from cow manure to southern Idaho-based Intermountain Gas Co. Hansen said he is in discussions with Intrepid to someday include the algae project at the Whitesides Dairy.
But also, recently Hansen and fellow USU researchers received a $6 million grant, funded in part by the Utah Science and Technology Research Initiative, to work on this and other technologies to produce methane, biodiesel, hydrogen and alcohols from renewable, carbon-dioxide energy sources, such as consumer and agricultural waste and sunlight.
USU has plans to produce an algae-biodiesel that is cost competitive by 2009, according to a university press release.
Steve Whitesides, who owns the Whitesides Dairy but not the biogas technology at the dairy, said he keeps an open mind to the idea of using more emerging technology at his dairy.
Whitesides, who has been a dairyman for some 30 years, said “We’ve always worked with different companies with different projects.”
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