Israel just bought into one of the crappiest ideas around, and it’s paying off. A few years ago, amid a nationwide effort to clean up manure, which emits methane (a greenhouse gas), the Minister of Environment told 55 farmers in Hefer Valley to bury the dung from their 12,000 dairy cows. So the Hefer farmers teamed up with a water-purification company to create a power plant fueled by dung. Their recipe: mix the dung with water, then stir and heat, releasing methane that turns turbines. The plant, about 50 kilometers north of Tel Aviv, went live on July 31. It processes 272 metric tons of manure a day and produces 1.6 megawatts of electricity, which is mainly funneled into Israel’s power grid. Full capacity, expected by the year-end, will be 2.4 megawatts. That’s less than half a percent of Israel’s electricity capacity, but suppliers of the technology insist that methane from manure could eventually be a cheaper energy source than fossil fuels.
