Chicken poop cuts CO2 emissions

What do you do when you realise your neighbourhood polluting coal power plant is…er… a neighbourhood polluting coal power plant. If you’re a chicken farm north of Beijing, with three million odd chickens, then you convert it to use the 220 tonnes of waste chicken poop – of course.

Estimates suggest the overhauled plant at Dequingyuan will cut CO2 emissions by 95,000 tonnes per year. Not bad for 14,600 MWh of electricity per year.

According to EcoGeek:

“An anaerobic digester will treat waste material and produce biogas that powers two gas engines. The heat generated during the process will be cycled back in to the fermentation process, as well as heat the farm and all those chickens during winter…so they can poo more. Nice loop, isn’t it.”

I doubt Jaime Oliver or Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall will be all that happy that the chickens are still being battery produced, but I guess you have to handle things one step at a time. And it gives a whole new meaning to the term battery hens…