How It Works
Quick Facts About the Jordan Dairy Farm Anaerobic Digester
- The plant blends farm manure, food scraps and food processing byproducts to produce biogas that runs a generator to produce 3.7 million kilowatts a year of electricity - enough power to run about 300 homes per year.
- It is the first plant of its kind in Massachusetts. Massachusetts is the first to fully define a pathway for small farms to be permitted to use digesters that combine manure with organic food material from food processing plants.
- One cow produces enough electricity to power one average Massachusetts home and removes the equivalent greenhouse gases of two cars per cow from the atmosphere.
- Four major food companies – HP Hood & Sons, Cabot Creamery, Kayem Foods and Cains Foods – have agreed to provide the farm with food scraps and byproducts instead of sending it to disposal.
- Nationwide, food leftovers are the single-largest component of the waste stream by weight. Food scraps make up 17 percent (29 million tons/year) of what we send to landfills, or enough to fill the Rose Bowl every three days!
- All the equipment and services used to build the digester facility were made in the US – keeping manufacturing and construction jobs here.
- The process is a closed loop – everything is recycled, reused and repurposed, from the manure and food scraps that produce electricity; to the waste heat the plant generates that will be used in hoop houses to grow crops; to the organic fertilizer that remains after digestion that is used back on the land.
- AGreen is a unique partnership of dairy farms and the companies that built and will operate the plant – quasar energy group and New England Organics, a division of Casella Waste Systems. It will contribute significantly to sustaining small and medium sized dairy farms while reducing odors, water run-off and the use of chemicals.
- Four more digesters are planned, and Massachusetts could become the first state to use bonds, in collaboration with the USDA, to finance the such a project – a pathway from government incentives to private capital markets.
