Cow manure from local dairy farms will be run through digesters to generate natural gas that will run through a pipeline to the northwest Iowa town of Sioux Center. Aaron Maassen owns one of the three dairy farms involved in the project. He says it will not only expand the town’s capacity for natural gas, but it will also capture methane emissions from livestock waste.
Maassen says the greenhouse gas emissions eliminated will be equivalent to around 88-hundred cars. Sioux Center utilities assistant manager Adam Fedders says the community needs more natural gas capacity.
The farm digesters are expected to bring in around 350 MMBTUs a day, or around a third of the natural gas typically used in Sioux Center on a summer day. Construction on the pipeline is expected to begin as early as April.
