Ridding Israel’s environment of the poop of chickens and cows is a fabulous way to usher in the Jewish New Year. Once it becomes fully operational in the next few months, the recently inaugurated Be’er Tuviya biogas plant will scoop up the waste of 14,000 cows and in total roughly 15% of all chicken and dairy farms in the country. All that manure will then be used to generate electricity for thousands of homes.
Israel’s Largest Biogas Plant
Owned by Eco Energy, the $2.6 million Be’er Tuviya plant is not the first in Israel that will convert the energy of farm animals to biogas, but it is the largest.
Inaugurated last Monday, with local and national officials there to celebrate the event, the 4MW facility is expected to provide enough energy to power up to 6,000 homes – giving both the strained national grid.
The Be’er Tuviya Regional Council claims that biogas facilities also help to spare the environment by diverting livestock and poultry effluent from waterways and plugging odors, which attract flies.
The Manure will be collected from farms throughout the country and shipped in closed containers. Upon reaching Be’er Tuviya, it will be pasteurized and then stored in air-tight concrete tanks, where it will produce methane. This in turn will be used to generate electricity.
Any leftovers can be used as fertilizer.
Positive Environmental Impact
“We saw that in Ramat Hagolan, the possibility to operate bed and breakfasts in moshavim, made possible only after the activation of a facility that solved the problem of odors and flies from barns,” said Shay Levy, Eco Energy’s owner.
The new plant also helps to mitigate global warming and climate change.
“One cow can produce enough manure in one day to generate three kilowatt hours of electricity,” according to Wikipedia, and “only 2.4 kilowatt hours of electricity are needed to power a single one hundred watt light bulb for one day.”
Converting cow manure into methane biogas could also reduce global warming gases by 99 million metric tons or four percent, according to the same source.
Image: Dairy cows, Shutterstock
Author: Tafline Laylin
As a tour leader who led “eco-friendly” camping trips throughout North America, Tafline soon realized that she was instead leaving behind a trail of gas fumes, plastic bottles and Pringles. In fact, wherever she traveled – whether it was Viet Nam or South Africa or England – it became clear how inefficiently the mandate to re-think our consumer culture is reaching the general public. Born in Iran, raised in South Africa and the United States, she currently splits her time between Africa and the Middle East. Tafline can be reached at tafline (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
This further perpetuates the abuse going on in dairy farms, potentially making their business model more profitable and green. Humans should not consume cow secretions or derivatives thereof, being the only real long term fair and compassionate solution.
That thought occurred to me also, Ammon, but it’s a hard case to make until we know for certain that the waste is being sold?!?
I do hope that there is awareness to compassion for animals and not repeating the tragedy of Confined Animal Feeding Lots CAFOs, that has become an ethical and moral issue for our animals, antibiotics and the environment in the United States
CAFO – The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories http://ow.ly/dKdCF
Exclusive Video undercover inside the US dairy industry http://bit.ly/MCkq8L
CAFOs “Animal Concentration Camps” – The Tragedy of Industrial Food Animal Factories http://ow.ly/dKdKJ