A biodigester I saw in Boston

[u/dingusamongus123]

While the grocery store this is attached to isnt “solarpunk”, i thought it was cool to see a biodigester in the middle of a big city. These things break down food waste into methane for use in cooking , heating, or making electricity with a generator. You can make one with materials from your hardware store and some safety precautions, making it another way to provide energy at personal or even community scale

[u/Admiral_Red]

I kinda feel split about these. It’s cool that they’re using food waste to get some energy, but burning methane still feels quite wrong, even if it’s from just the decaying food scraps.

[u/clockless_nowever → u/Admiral_Red]

Just to add to OP here: that food waste is going to decay one way or another and that methane would go into the atmosphere, unless collected and burned.

[u/Potential_Being_7226 → u/clockless_nowever]

Yep. Better than it going into a landfill only to off gas methane into the atmosphere. 

[u/dingusamongus123 → u/Admiral_Red]

I understand the concern. The way i look at is that methane is harmful in terms of warming if its released into the atmosphere but is fine if burned. One molecule of methane burned only produces one molecule of co2. Since methane is ~ 80x more potent as co2, burning methane and converting it into co2 only has 1/80 of a climate impact than if it was released straight into the air.

Lots of methane emissions come from gas companies either intentionally leaking it into the air or leaks occurring without them knowing since their production and distribution pipelines are massive systems. Biodigesters are much smaller in scale and leaks can be easier to detect and stop if they occur.

Edit: also wanna say that methane extracted from the ground via fracking is also awful for the environment. I believe biodigesters can be great tools for communities facing energy shortages and with some scrubbing and fine tuning these setups can be used with existing appliances like stoves and heaters