Shawn Kreloff, Bioenergy Devco Founder and CEO, USA, discusses the best way North America can adapt to and cool down the fast-warming planet through emissions reduction.
Clean energy advocates say to adopt photovoltaics, geothermal, hydropower, or wind. Others urge for the conversion of transport from fossil fuel to electricity or hydrogen fuel cells. Still, more seek forest restoration or no-till farming that locks carbon in the ground.
Each answer plays an important role, yet a landmark study by the climate science organisation, Project Drawdown, found the most impactful solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is to reduce food waste.1
Slashing food waste eases pressure on habitats, reduces toxic runoff, and avoids up to 102 billion t of emissions.2 That is equivalent to removing 30 000 coal plants or adding 30 million wind turbines. Each week, dump trucks load 1 million t of food waste and haul it off to be incinerated, where it is combusted and emitted as an environmental pollutant,3 or taken to a landfill, where it decomposes and releases methane, a harmful greenhouse gas.
Bagged, spread, or buried in pockets without sunlight or oxygen, organic waste gets broken down by microorganisms through a natural, four-stage process called anaerobic digestion (AD). In a landfill setting, this process releases methane into the atmosphere, compounding negative environmental effects that may have been generated through the food supply chain.
But this natural process of AD can be harnessed, and the biogas it generates can be used as a source of clean, renewable energy to provide heat and electricity to homes or alternative fuels for vehicles.4
The use of anaerobic digestion
Bagged, spread, or buried in pockets without sunlight or oxygen, organic waste gets broken down by microorganisms through a natural, four-stage process called anaerobic digestion (AD). In a landfill setting, this process releases methane into the atmosphere, compounding negative environmental effects that may have been generated through the food supply chain.
But this natural process of AD can be harnessed, and the biogas it generates can be used as a source of clean, renewable energy to provide heat and electricity to homes or alternative fuels for vehicles.4
The use of anaerobic digestion
AD is both natural and timeless. For billions of years, microbes have broken down dead organic matter into rich muck and swamp gas. But in the past few centuries, Instead of abandoning food to rot in landfills, regional alliances have begun to carefully and responsibly divert organic feedstock into and process it through enclosed AD waste processing and conversion systems. Today’s next-generation anaerobic digesters master every aspect of breaking down food waste: the content, density, consistency, volume, flow, moisture level, temperature, and microbial activity.
In goes discarded waste; out come precious resources. Because the system is sealed airtight, anaerobic digesters refine the generated biogas into clean energy, such as: renewable natural gas (RNG), electricity, or even green hydrogen. Fresh water can flow back into the basin, cleansed of any risks from harmful contaminants, pathogens, or chemicals. And the solid byproduct is a nutrient-rich soil amendment, digestate – much like compost.
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