Smart Energy and Biogas – How it works
We think it’s time for the cows to come home in the fight against climate change.
With Smart Energy, NW Natural has proudly become the first local gas distribution company in the nation to launch a carbon offset program. Smart Energy was developed as a five-year pilot program that offers NW Natural customers an opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint by offsetting their natural gas use. The average NW Natural customer’s gas usage generates about four tons of carbon dioxide each year. Smart Energy helps offset and neutralize that carbon dioxide emission that leading scientists around the world have linked to climate change.
For about the cost of a latte per month, NW Natural customers can participate in Smart Energy and help support local projects that are having a positive effect on the environment. These projects include innovative initiatives such as capturing methane gas from cow manure to keep it out of the atmosphere, where it is a 21 times more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The captured methane can also be used as a renewable energy source.
Biogas from cow manure is still in its infancy, but realizing the possibilities and working to make it a reality is exactly what the Smart Energy program is designed to do.
While the focus of Smart Energy is to develop biogas for its carbon reduction benefits, it offers other compelling advantages for local farm communities. Biogas projects allow farmers to manage their manure in a way that protects the environment, minimize farm odors, and can help provide new sources of revenues for dairy farmers in our region.
Investment in the Environment
NW Natural does not profit from funds raised through Smart Energy. The money is used to fund greenhouse gas reduction projects, to educate customers about the program, and for the administration of the project through The Climate Trust, a leading non-profit organization and one of the largest institutional purchasers of offsets in the United States. The Climate Trust, which manages Smart Energy funds, supports innovative strategies to reduce, avoid, or capture greenhouse gas emissions.
Smart Energy is only part of the total solution for reducing greenhouse gases. The first step is to conserve energy by being more efficient and reducing our consumption. One of the goals with Smart Energy is to use less and offset the rest.
In fact, because of energy efficiency improvements, natural gas customers have reduced their household consumption so dramatically that there has been virtually no growth in emissions in nearly three decades, despite a 70 percent increase in households using natural gas. (HINT ALERT: This statement should help you answer one of the current Smart Energy Challenge questions. Click here to enter your guess today!)
At NW Natural, we’re offsetting the carbon dioxide emissions created by the natural gas used to heat all of our facilities throughout the five year Smart Energy pilot program, totaling a reduction of 6,160 tons of carbon dioxide.
If you’re curious about how you or your business can sign up for Smart Energy, more information is available here.
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Can you start capturing methane gas from cow manure in Tillamook soon?! I love going there, but the smell!! Yuck! …and it’s great that you’ll be producing clean energy from it too.
Great question. The hope from our pilot project at Threemile Canyon Farms in Boardman is that it can be considered as a viable manure management tool at other farms. The technology is considered cost-effective, and therefore could be emulated and used widely throughout the region on big and small farms.
We’ll be keeping customers updated in our communications as the project progresses.
Thank you for your interest, and the opportunity to respond.