The Dover-based Chesapeake Utilities Corp. announced earlier this month it would diversify its sources of natural gas with a plentiful and problematic Delmarva resource: chicken litter.
Via a partnership with CleanBay Renewables, an enviro-tech company focused on sustainably sourced natural gas, Chesapeake Utilities will deliver natural gas generated from chicken litter to customers on the Eastern Shore, according to a company announcement.
"As Chesapeake Utilities Corporation and its subsidiaries continue to move forward with regional expansion, the goal is to create a renewable natural gas ecosystem directly connected to Chesapeake Utilities' infrastructure," the announcement states.
Chicken litter is a combination of manure, bedding material, feathers and spilled feed.
The litter is a source of phosphorous and nitrogen (on average, a ton of dry litter contains 60 pounds of nitrogen and 40 pounds of phosphorus) which are nutrients that, while necessary for life, are overabundant in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and cause aquatic habitat destruction.
Chicken litter can be converted into biogas, a type of natural gas that consists mostly of methane and carbon dioxide. Because chicken litter can be a problem on Delmarva due to its environmental implications and abundance, turning it into biogas is an eco-friendly solution, CleanBay says.
"Through this partnership, Chesapeake Utilities Corporation has an immediate and scalable opportunity to further impact climate change," said Thomas Spangler, CleanBay Renewables' executive chairman, in a statement. "Our process to turn poultry litter into renewable natural gas is a sustainable, environmentally friendly way to both positively influence our region's poultry ecosystem and reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions for end-use customers, including powering vehicle fleets with clean, green energy."
The Westover bio-refinery can repurpose more than 150,000 tons of chicken litter annually, which is equal to 765,000 million British thermal units of natural gas — enough energy to power about 10,000 homes, the announcement says.
Chickens raised on Delmarva produced 552,598 tons of dry litter in 2018, according to modeling by the Chesapeake Bay Program. If the Westover facility runs optimally, it will be processing almost 30% of the peninsula's chicken waste.
Burning natural gas as fuel produces less carbon dioxide than burning coal, though not as much less as other energy sources, like wind or solar.
More: Natural gas pipeline through Salisbury to be discussed at hearing, opposition anticipated
Using a "virtual pipeline" concept — transport by road, rail or sea instead of via pipeline — Chesapeake Utilities subsidiary Marlin Gas will transport natural gas from the CleanBay facility to Eastern Shore Natural Gas, Chesapeake Utilities' interstate infrastructure pipeline, where it will be distributed to customers.
The Eastern Shore Natural Gas Company owns and operates a 455-mile interstate pipeline that transports natural gas from various points in Pennsylvania to customers in Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Construction on the Westover facility is scheduled to begin later this year, and more facilities are planned for the future, according to the announcement.
CleanBay Renewables received a $1.4 million Maryland Department of Agriculture grant in October 2016 toward this project, according to the MDA. CleanBay's capital investment was over $200 million, according to the company.
Some environmental advocates, however, disagree that biogas is a truly renewable solution, compared to other sources of energy, like wind power.
The Assateague Coastal Trust says using poultry manure as fuel is a bad solution because it will entrench the poultry industry into Delmarva's utility structure and contribute to the industry's growth on the peninsula.
"Once there is a market for burning poultry manure, there will be a push to build even more and bigger industrial poultry facilities — instead of diversifying our agricultural sector and building our renewable energy supplies," said Kathy Phillips, Assateague Coastkeeper and executive director of the Assateague Coastal Trust, in a statement.
But poultry company advocacy group Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc. disagrees.
"Anyone who speculates family farms will operate by trying to increase their litter production hasn’t paid attention to more than 30 years of sustained effort to do the opposite: reduce overall litter volume leaving chickenhouses," wrote James Fisher, spokesman for Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc., in an email.
Fisher rejects the concept of industrial poultry facilities, stating he doesn't "know of any."
"But I can speak to what chicken farmers are likely to do!" he wrote. "The chicken community welcomes proven technologies that offer alternative, economically viable uses for litter; we also know well that litter is a valuable, locally-produced organic fertilizer for grain crops. But what gets a chicken grower out of bed each morning is the satisfaction of producing chickens — not the litter that is their byproduct. I’ve never met a ‘litter farmer’ in my life."
Farmers actively reduce litter volume via management practices like windrowing (a method of in-house litter composting and recycling between flocks), Fisher wrote. And by providing chicken feed that produces litter lower in nitrogen and phosphorus, farmers can create litter that causes fewer negative environmental effects.
The creation of a new market for the waste will not cause litter-reduction strategies to be rolled back, Fisher wrote.
More: Do 'happy chickens' make for a happy planet? It's complicated. Here's why.
"That progress wasn’t accidental — farmers worked hard to achieve it, and we’re continuing to improve on that front," he wrote.
Environmental advocates have also expressed opposition to the other source of natural gas that will flow through the Chesapeake Utilities pipeline: fracking operations in Pennsylvania. Others have raised concerns about the pipeline's plans to cross various wetlands and about potential gas leakage out of the pipeline, which causes pollution and could lead to an explosion.
Natural gas is mostly methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that in 2017, methane emissions from natural gas and petroleum systems and from abandoned oil and natural gas wells were the source of about 32% of total U.S. methane emissions and about 4% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
CleanBay's biogas facility is slated to start construction in Westover in Somerset County, Maryland, later this year.
The public comment period for the wetlands permit for the Salisbury/Fruitland connection, a segment of the pipeline running along Route13 through Salisbury, closed July 21.
Chesapeake Utilities is in the permitting process for its new pipelines, which will connect to several locations in Somerset County. Among them are Eastern Correctional Institute and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
The project's contract with the state gives a delivery date of September 2021.
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July 28, 2020 at 06:00PM
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