one of its most readily-available resources<\/a>: the manure produced by the half a million cows on its U.K. farms alone.<\/p>\nIt is in the middle of a three-month trial looking at the viability of turning manure into fuel for its delivery trucks, working with two farms to collect the raw material that would usually be used by farmers as a fertilizer.<\/p>\n
The manure, combined with other materials such as food waste, are put into an anaerobic digester that acts like a cow\u2019s stomach, to produce gas, which is then cleaned and liquified into fuel that Arla then uses to power two of its milk trucks. Currently, Arla is running the trial with two of its farms in Buckinghamshire, a county northwest of London, said Graham Wilkinson, the company\u2019s agriculture director.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe collect it off two farms as part of the trial \u2026 but we\u2019ve got 2,500 (U.K. farms) to go in the longer term, so there\u2019s definitely the opportunity to scale up. We\u2019ve got plenty of cow manure,\u201d Wilkinson told CNBC by phone.<\/p>\n
The U.K. pilot follows a 2019 trial in Sweden, where Arla\u2019s farms have the potential to produce biofuel that is equivalent to 54 million liters of diesel. That trial showed that running a truck on biofuel is cheaper than using diesel, but the vehicles themselves are more expensive, Wilkinson said. \u201cThe ambition would be to go down this (biofuel) route and for it to be more financially viable than diesel. We need to think differently from diesel anyway,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The anaerobic production process also produces a substance called digestate, which farmers can use as a natural fertilizer for crops. Usually, they\u2019d spread slurry and manure directly on to crops, but that is very watery, Wilkinson explained. \u201d(There\u2019s) a tougher consistency within the digestate, which actually (has) more nutrients. So, ultimately, what (the farmers) get back is of a higher value,\u201d he said. Eventually, Wilkinson would like to get to a point where farmers wouldn\u2019t have to use nitrous oxide-rich manufactured fertilizer that currently contributes to carbon emissions.<\/p>\n
As well as benefiting the environment and farmers, another long-term aim is to save money, in an industry where the price paid for milk fluctuates. Farmers called for shoppers to boycott U.K. supermarkets over dairy prices in 2015, while Sardinian producers poured sheep\u2019s milk into the streets during a 2019 protest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThroughout our whole supply chain we are relentlessly looking at how we do things, and how we can simplify it \u2026 the potential with this (biofuel trial) \u2026 is it could be another example of where we could actually take cost out and benefit our farmers at the same time,\u201d Wilkinson stated.<\/p>\n
Big energy<\/p>\n
Creating energy from food waste is something that oil company Phillips 66 hopes to be able to do on a huge scale. It is planning to spend around $800 million to turn its San Francisco refinery in Rodeo, California into a renewable fuel plant, which it claims would be the world\u2019s largest.<\/p>\n
Phillips 66 announced the plan in August and if it gets approved by authorities, the \u201cRodeo Renewed\u201d project would produce 680 million gallons of biofuels a year and is likely to begin production in 2024. The raw materials include used soybean and cooking oil and other fats (known as renewable \u201cfeedstocks\u201d) and would be delivered to the plant via its existing marine and rail terminals, said Joe Gannon, senior advisor for external communications at Phillips 66, in an email to CNBC.<\/p>\n
\u201cDue to the facility being the largest in the world, the feedstocks will be sourced both domestically and internationally and are currently under evaluation to ensure reliable supply and minimization of impact to the environment,\u201d Gannon stated.<\/p>\n
Infrastructure is also something Arla is keen to have more of, and Wilkinson wants government backing in building anaerobic digestion (AD) facilities. \u201cWe\u2019re relatively confident that from a financial perspective it is a viable option, but if we haven\u2019t got the AD (anaerobic digester) facilities to be able to utilize, then that\u2019s where we need support,\u201d he told CNBC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like many large businesses, dairy company Arla Foods has grand plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and the firm aims to be carbon net zero by 2050. Around 85% of Arla\u2019s total emissions come from the co-operative of 10,000 farms it has across Europe, a combination of the methane and nitrous oxide from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[10416,5627,13305,13306],"supplier":[9739,17384],"class_list":["post-80748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-circulareconomy","tag-energy","tag-fuel","tag-methane","supplier-arla-foods","supplier-phillips-66"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80748"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=80748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}