Renewable Energy

Farm-Based Anaerobic Digester Economics

Farm-Based Anaerobic Digesters as an Energy and Odor Control Technology: Background and Policy Issues, USDA Office of Energy Policy and New Uses, Agricultural Economic Report Number 843, by William F. Lazarus.

An Analysis of Energy Production Costs from Anaerobic Digestion Systems on U.S. Livestock Production Facilities, by Beddoes, Bracmort, Burns, and Lazarus, USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service Technical Note No. 1.  

A 2007 project funded from the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund resulted in development of Digester_Econ.xls, an Excel spreadsheet for doing rough initial calculations of annual costs and returns to be expected from owning and operating a methane digester on a dairy farm.

• Digester_Econ.xls

In 1999, Haubenschild Farms installed a plug-flow anaerobic digester on their dairy farm. Since the date of the installation for their digester, the Haubenschilds have been very active in studying the digester and effects on their farm. Through a grant from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), The Minnesota Project partnered with the University of Minnesota and Haubenschild Farms to study and educate farmers on the economics and benefits of digesters and digested manure compared to other dairy systems.

The links below take you to our reports, which are stored on the website of Minnesota Project, Inc.

Overview fact sheet (pdf 86KB)

Entire final report to the NRCS for all project results (pdf 472KB)

Economic evaluation of anaerobic digester-economic section for the final report only (pdf 105KB)

Factsheet summarizing project results relating to the economic evaluation (pdf 136KB)

Factsheet comparing the competitiveness of confinement dairies to grazing dairies (pdf 86KB)