Townsend, David (Premium Standard Farms Inc., 805 Pennsylvania Ave, Kansas City, MO, 64105; Phone: 816-843-1471; Email: dave.townsend@psfarms.com)

 

Aggregating and Trading Anaerobic Digester Carbon Credits

 

D. Townsend *, M. Gabris

 

Premium Standard Farms is the second largest hog producer in the United States and a member of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX).  Through our membership at CCX we have committed to reducing our company wide greenhouse gas emissions.  We have two anaerobic digester systems near Dalhart, Texas that capture methane and burn it for process heat.  We have aggregated carbon credits from these systems and are beginning to trade them at CCX.  In addition, we are constructing a large digester system in Missouri that will capture methane and use it to dry manure to a granular fertilizer (Crystal Peak process).  We plan to market carbon credits from this project as an additional revenue source to help finance the project.  We have encountered and worked through numerous technical, procedural and accounting challenges in determining our baseline emissions and obtaining third party verification of our digester methane production.