Manure in Demand as ‘Renewable Natural Gas’

DENVER—Visitors to the American Biogas Council’s annual Biogas Americas trade show at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver might think J. Paul Getty got it backward when the oil tycoon said, “Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.” For renewable natural gas vendors at the April 28–30 event, manure is like money. It’s something to concentrate, convert into power, and reinvest to seed future growth. Otherwise, it risks smelling like a lost waste-to-energy opportunity to cash in on an ample resource. “There’s a lot of manure out there and more is always being made,” ChemtronRiverBend’s senior director of biotechnologies and engineering, Christopher Hatch, said....