Pacific Gas & Electric Co. said Thursday it will purchase natural gas from cow manure produced at dairy farms in California to fuel power plants. The utility, a subsidiary of PG&E Corp., will buy the gas from Environmental Power Corp., a renewable energy developer based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The gas will be generated by Environmental Power subsidiary Microgy Inc. at four production plants processing the manure at dairy farms in Californias Central Valley, said Jeff Dasovich, senior vice president at Microgy.

The deal is for the purchase of up to 8,000 decatherms per day of pipeline-quality gas. Financial terms and the length of the gas purchase agreement were not disclosed. Depending on the timing of regulatory approvals, the gas could be flowing to PG&E by the end of 2007. Microgy also supplies cow gas to Dairyland Power Cooperative in Wisconsin and is in talks with several US utilities for gas supply deals, Dasovich said.

For PG&E, the deal is the utilitys first to purchase biomass gas to add to its supply of renewable energy, a company spokeswoman said. Renewable energy makes up 12 percent of the utilitys power resources. California regulators have directed the states investor-owned utilities to make renewable resources 20 percent of their power supplies by 2010.
(Planet Ark, 13/10/2006)
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/38497/story.htm