Ellington-This is a common farm smell, but for the largest dairy operator in Connecticut, cow dung is the smell of money.

In the complex business of the energy market, the manure produced by the 3,000 cows of Ellington Oakridge Dairy will be converted into natural gas for sale in New Jersey.

Oakridge and its partner South Jersey Industries recently broke ground on an anaerobic digester that will capture the raw methane and other greenhouse gases produced by manure. In this process, bacteria decompose organic matter, such as animal feces, wastewater, and food waste, in the absence of oxygen.

The US$12 million project will start operations in September next year and will convert biogas into commercial-grade renewable natural gas and add it to the distribution system of Elizabethtown Gas, a subsidiary of Folsom, New Jersey, and its 300,000 customers.

CEO Seth Bahler said that Oakridge was founded in 1890 and is already the fifth generation, and it will welcome new sources of income to pay for high taxes and rising energy and labor costs. He said that the local milk market used to dominate, but Oakridge is now competing in the global market.

"We have to produce it cheaper, and Connecticut is not cheap," he said.

Oakridge will not lack the raw materials that are fed to the digester. Bahler said that a cow eats 100 pounds of food a day and produces 15 gallons of manure. He said that Oakridge Dairy still has enough room to fertilize its 3,000 acres of land.

For South Jersey Industries Inc., the Oakridge project will be the first project to break ground in a dairy farm portfolio in cooperation with REV LNG, a renewable energy project development and mobile energy service company.

Dominick DiRocco, vice president of external affairs, said SJI has other investment opportunities in Michigan and elsewhere. The natural gas produced by Oakridge will be liquefied and trucked to customers in New Jersey.

"There are not many dairy farms in New Jersey," Diroko said. "There are not enough cows to produce natural gas."

According to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, agriculture accounted for 10% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. Emissions come from livestock such as dairy cows, agricultural soil and rice production.

Some environmentalists advocate the use of zero-emission electricity from sources such as wind and solar as a better option than methane delivered to homes through pipelines. Methane leakage and the combustion of the final product will have a greater impact on the environment.

Nonetheless, it produces “much less greenhouse gases than throwing manure into the lagoon,” said Matthew Freund, co-owner of East Canaan’s Freund Farm.

He said that Freund's operated an earlier digester, dating back to 1997. This is a septic tank heated to the body temperature of a cow to replicate a stomach chamber and collect gas used to power farm offices, houses, water and digesters.

Fort Hill Farms, a Thompson dairy farm, uses cow dung and restaurant waste to generate electricity and sells it to Middletown and New Britain. As part of the state plan approved in 2014, electricity production was initially used to reduce electricity consumption on farms, and surplus electricity was used to reduce electricity bills for others.

Kies Orr, a member of the fourth-generation owner of Fort Hill Farms, said that her father died in 2018 and started planning the anaerobic digester about five years ago.

She said: "My father asked us how to maintain sustainable development and diversification to stay alive."

More farmers in Connecticut's small-scale agriculture sector are showing interest in generating income by converting cow dung into energy. Despite its large scale, $4 billion per year, agriculture is only a small part of the state's nearly $295 billion economy.

Agriculture Commissioner Bryan Hurlburt said that other biogas digester projects are under discussion, and state legislation enacted this year simplifies the process of issuing permits.

Ellington Democrat Foster said the Oakridge anaerobic digester planning work took five years, most of which was in negotiations with state environmental officials.

In order to require only one license, legislators enacted legislation this year to speed up the licensing process. Foster said that previous regulations related to hazardous waste and air pollution took the most time to get state approval.

The number of farms in the United States with a manure-based anaerobic digestion system is very small: 317 farms reduce methane emissions by collecting biogas produced by the degradation of animal manure. According to AgSTAR, AgSTAR is a cooperative project sponsored by the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Aims to promote the recycling and utilization of biogas.

The largest number of dairy farms is 255, and the rest are pig farms, poultry farms and beef farms.

Freund said the digester is an expensive investment and requires "considerable maintenance." They also need "people who are really interested in managing it."

"There are many reasons why we are not getting more digesters," Freund said.

AgSTAR estimates that the biogas recovery system can be used in more than 8,000 large dairy and pig farms, and may generate nearly 16 million megawatt hours of electricity each year, replacing approximately 2,010 megawatts of fossil fuel power generation.

"In the final analysis, every farmer wants to do this on their farm," Baller said.

Stephen Singer can be contacted at ssinger@courant.com.