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Franklin County farm seeks to sell renewable natural gas - WCAX

WCAX · last updated April 4, 2023 – 1:37 PM

Franklin County farm seeks to sell renewable natural gas

BERKSHIRE, Vt. (WCAX) - A Franklin County farm is hoping their renewable natural gas, or cow power, will one day compete for space in natural gas lines across the state.

Tuesday was a boiling day for Pleasant Valley Farm’s sugaring operation. “We make maple syrup and milk dairy cows in northern Vermont on the Canadian border,” explained the farm’s Jamie St. Pierre.

Like many Vermont dairy operations, the Berkshire farm has diversified in recent years, but St. Pierre says there’s nothing common about the future of their farm. “It seems like there are more and better options for dairy farms to produce renewable natural gas instead of electricity,” he said.

Pleasant Valley already has a digester turning cow manure from their 4,000 cows into electricity. They use some of that power to keep the lights on in the sugarhouse. RNG accounts for about 1% of Vermont’s power but an effort underway to triple their digester capacity could change that. Instead of generating electricity, they will be purifying the biogas into RNG suitable for any pipeline.

“The dairy market is up and down, so it’s nice to have an income stream different from the milk market,” St. Pierre explained.

“With our carbon footprint, we are always looking at that and try to do the best we can,” added the farm’s Bradley St. Pierre. The brothers say the goal is to convert their sap boilers to natural gas in order to cut the cord on fuel oil and make it a circular system.

“How to do the best for our state with our cows and our maple trees to do the best we can as farmers and stewards of the land,” Bradley said.

But there will be more natural gas generated than just power a single sugarhouse. It will also be injected back into Vermont Gas’ line and be available to all the company’s customers.

“What we are doing now is decarbonizing the natural gas lines going to your house,” said Mark Hill, with Michigan-based company Novilla RNG. He says it will be the second RNG facility in Vermont and the first run entirely on cow manure. “This is a negative carbon intensity fuel that we are making available to Vermonters.”

Vermont Gas says RNG makes up about 2% of their sales and that could grow to 12%.

For the 4th generation dairy farmers, the Pierres see RNG production as another way to stay viable, allowing the fifth generation to take over. “Diversification to make the farm financially stronger so we can transition it to the next generation. You gotta pay the bills first, so this could be a good opportunity for us,” Bradley said.

Franklin County farm seeks to sell renewable natural gas - WCAX

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