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