April's Wednesday Morning Roundtable: Sustainable Agriculture & Renewable Energy
Advocates of a proposed biogas pipeline in Cayuga County made their pitch at this month's Wednesday Morning Roundtable gathering, calling the project an exemplary public-private partnership with important environmental and economic benefits.
The pipeline project has been in the planning stages for years. Methane gas extracted from cow manure via digesters on farms at the southern end of the county would travel north to a county-owned generator in Aurelius.
The county would buy the gas from the farmers and sell the electricity to consumers at the Industrial Development Agency's business park, which is currently looking to attract tenants.
The gathering, held at The Center in Auburn, marked the fourth session in the monthly roundtable series, which was started this year as a new venture of the group of community leaders known as the Blueprint Group, following its 2007 report called, “A Call to Action: A Blueprint for Our Region's Future.”
During the presentation, dairy farmer Doug Young, the owner of Spruce Haven Farm and Research Center, estimated that if eight farms all fed into the pipeline, the county could create about $8 million worth of electricity every year.
"Intuitively, this could pay for itself in two to three years, certainly in 10," Young said, estimating the cost of the pipeline would be between $3 million and $7 million.
The county is currently deciding on an engineering firm to complete a technical analysis of the project. That study should answer questions about how much the infrastructure will cost, how much energy will be produced and how much it might sell for.
State and federal agencies are helping fund the study of the project, which County Senior Economic Development Planner Frank Howe said is attracting attention across the country and around the world.
Indeed, Young returned Monday from a meeting in Europe with international food corporations where he presented the project and asked for research and development support from Nestle. Howe highlighted the economic impact the project could have in the county, both in retaining current businesses and attracting new ones.
"We can clearly see through rising gas prices that this is an economic priority and a global priority," he said.
Four county farms currently have digesters and another three, including Spruce Haven, are working to get one.
The digesters cost between $3 million and $5 million, and the farms have sought public financing to help build them. Detractors protest that the project is a public subsidy for large concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.
Some audience members questioned how the natural gas pipeline would affect the market for gas produced through hydraulic fracturing; Young said he didn't know, but that "ultimately, fossil fuel and natural gas (which is selling at cheap prices currently) have to come together in terms of price."
Howe responded that the technical analysis is meant to address those financial questions. The county's search committee will release its recommendation for the technical analysis firm in May, Howe said.
— Staff writer Justin Murphy
