A dairy farm in Cockerham says that converting manure into power could save the agriculture industry.
Hillam Lane Farm works alongside Cockerham Green Energy in Lancaster, using a device called an Anaerobic Digester (AD) to convert their cow waste into electricity and heat.
The farm, consisting of 220 acres and supporting 200 dairy cows, previously racked up an electricity bill ranging between £25,000 and £30,000.
But with their AD machine the farm have not spent a penny on electricity or heat and have developed into an environmentally friendly powerhouse.
"It's the perfect fit for dairy farming," Graeme Surtees, a stakeholder in Cockerham Green Energy, told LancsLive.
"We first started looking at digesters about 10 years ago when we became aware of the whole principle of turning waste into power.
"We visited farms across America and Europe, as we visited more farms it became more of an interest and a passion.
"Where we live there are quite a lot of dairy cows, they produce a huge amount of waste and so turning that slurry into power really attracted us."
The ADs work in the same way as cows do.
Like our bovine friends they have four stomachs, or fermenters, that help to process cow slurry.
The manure is held in the fermenter at body temperature creating bacteria that feed on it.
This creates methane gas as a by product which is then used to create electricity and to produce heat through an exhaust system.
Graeme said: "The heat and electricity has been the big difference.
"We've also saved more than half of the fertiliser that we use on the farm by using the digestate left behind after the fermentation process.
"It's allowed us to cut fertiliser bills by £30,000 in a year."
Not only are the ADs cutting costs for Hill Lane, it is also significantly reducing their carbon footprint and waste.
The digesters can take in up to 25 tonnes of waste each day and produce 1,100 kw of energy per hour thereafter, making sure that harmful methane gases don't enter the atmosphere whilst recycling the large amount of waste produced by cows.
"Our carbon footprint has been produced per litre of milk we produced," said Graeme.
"Dairy cows will produce 70 litres of waste a day, that's 14 tonnes a day for the 200 cows on our farm.
"In the summer the slurry goes out on the fields as the walk about but during the winter we collect it."
Currently Hillam Lanes one of just 80 farms in the country to have an AD.
One of the main problems with ADs is the money involved with even the most simple digesters costing more than £500,000 to build.
But Graeme believes that the wider use of digesters could change the farming industry for the better.
He said: "The first thing I will say is that the agricultural industry in the UK is taking a lot of flak at the moment in terms of meat and dairy production.
"Farming has been here for thousands of years, we are not responsible for global warming or climate change.
"Farming can have a good impact on climate change, that will come out in time."
