Cow manure could power data centers—at a cost

Cow manure – A Pennsylvania dairy is producing renewable natural gas from manure to run a crypto operation on-site, pitching the same model for powering data centers. Supporters see reliability and grid relief; critics warn the digester-to-data-center link could deepen dep

On the surface, Lent Hill Dairy Farm in Steuben County, New York reads like business as usual: red farm buildings housing about 4,000 cows, a massive manure pit, and two dome-like anaerobic co-digesters.

But on this site, the gas made from that waste is not just for heating or electricity. It’s powering an on-site cryptomine. The operation—run by Pennsylvania-based Ag-Grid Energy—describes itself as the first of its kind in the country. using anaerobic digestion of manure and local food waste to produce renewable natural gas. or RNG.

In most places, that RNG is transported for use as electricity, heating, and fuel. At Lent Hill, it serves another purpose: running computing. Ag-Grid Energy founder and CEO Rashi Akki says the point is not only energy production, but value for the rural area where the project is located.

“At the end of the day, our model is providing value to the rural area that we are in,” Akki told Sentient.

The company says the facility can recycle more than 45,000 gallons of food waste per day and the manure from 4,000 cows. Akki also frames the technology as a bridge between waste management and what she calls “the value of the AI computing capacity. ” describing the goal as providing that capacity to the same regional area “if possible through fiber optics.”.

Ag-Grid Energy’s pitch is aimed at midsize dairies—creating on-site power generation for small-scale data centers. Yet the broader demand driving interest is coming from far larger players. Tech giants increasingly seek fossil fuel alternatives to power hyperscale data centers without straining the grid.

Data centers already account for 4.9 percent of the country’s electricity use. and some projections in the industry suggest that figure could double by 2030. That growing appetite has helped turn manure digesters into something new: not just environmental equipment for farm waste. but potential energy infrastructure for the digital economy.

Biogas proponents—an unusually wide coalition spanning agriculture, fossil fuels, utilities, and waste management—have pushed renewable natural gas sourced in part by manure digesters as a sustainable way forward.

In California, Microsoft has partnered with Enchanted Rock to use RNG for backup data center power. Vanguard Renewables, a waste management company and a portfolio company of Black Rock, has described RNG as “the fuel of the AI age.”

Critics, however, fear the digester-to-data-center link could give digesters an economic lifeline at a moment when they’re struggling to stay online.

Renewable natural gas from digesters is often described as a “drop-in energy solution,” Sarah D’Onofrio said. A scholar and advocate who works with digester-impacted communities. D’Onofrio told Sentient that “drop-in” means the RNG can be used without changing existing fossil fuel based infrastructure. She also said RNG can be added alongside other fuel sources such as natural gas. allowing companies to claim they are fueling data centers sustainably.

But D’Onofrio argues that the climate math changes when the goal becomes substituting renewable inputs rather than switching to clean energy fuels.

“Why would you want to incorporate that [RNG] into our fuel system during the period of climate change?” she said.

D’Onofrio has helped communities in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina defeat proposals for large-scale co-digesters. She worries data centers could create a “new, massive market” that draws money back into the manure-to-energy industry. In her telling, that market could also incentivize more factory farming.

“It attaches these industrial food operations into our energy system and makes us really dependent on them over time, because the more it becomes intermingled with agriculture, the more it’s going to concentrate agriculture,” D’Onofrio said.

The concern is rooted in scale. Animals raised on factory farms in the U.S. produce an estimated 941 billion pounds of manure each year, contaminating air and water in communities across the country. Digesters are frequently marketed as a way to reduce harm. capture methane. and manage waste—but critics emphasize that the waste does not disappear.

The digested waste, known as digestate, is meant to be recycled into products such as fertilizer and animal bedding. Yet the downstream path comes with economic and environmental challenges. Digested manure can be more polluting than manure that hasn’t been digested, according to USDA research.

That conflict—between promises of management and the realities communities face—has played out in small towns as well as in policy debates.

In 2023. Victoria Gehrke. a community organizer who owns recreational property in Lind. Wisconsin. learned that a leader in the waste-to-energy field had proposed a co-digester in the town. Gehrke and fellow organizer Laurie Knutzen moved quickly, trying to understand what the project would mean locally.

They found what they describe as direct impacts: hazardous air emissions; trucks going in and out delivering industrial food waste; and few restrictions about where that waste would come from. They also said the project intended to send about 41. 000 gallons of waste per day into a tributary of Walla Walla Creek. which empties into Lake Michigan.

“These are manure and industrial food-waste processing and biogas-producing facilities, they are not ag accessories,” Gehrke said of co-digesters. “They don’t belong on ag land. ” she explained. adding that what she sees as industrial dumping has made small rural communities “sacrificial dumping grounds” for waste other big places don’t want.

After more than a year of relentless community opposition. the town of Lind denied Vanguard’s application in the spring of 2024. Organizers celebrated the decision, but Vanguard is still “developing and operating” more than 50 co-digesters across the country. It aims to have more than 100 completed projects by the end of 2028.

Supporters see that growth as necessary to meet data center demand. Patrick Serfass, executive director of the American Biogas Council, told Sentient that biogas is an “excellent fit” for data centers seeking a reliable, high-capacity fuel source.

“We’re really excited about the prospect of biogas systems being able to provide power to data centers, because they can provide that reliability,” Serfass said.

He also warned that the demand could expand co-digester buildouts nationwide. Serfass estimates the U.S. has built only about 10 percent to 15 percent of the biogas market’s capacity, implying room for expansion if demand rises.

“The data centers are going to be so hungry for power that they could eat up pretty much all of the supply that the biogas industry could create,” Serfass said.

Vanguard Renewables makes a similar pitch. In an email statement to Sentient. the company said that as energy demand from data centers continues to grow. “there is increasing interest in solutions that are both reliable and lower carbon.” The company has not yet partnered directly with data centers. but it has partnered with energy delivery companies like TotalEnergies and Enbridge. which have relationships with hyperscalers and data center operators.

In November 2025, TotalEnergies signed a 15-year deal with Google to provide solar energy supporting the company’s data center operations in Ohio.

Digesters aren’t a new technology. They have long been described as a way to reduce emissions. capture methane. and manage waste—framed as a solution to agriculture’s methane problem. Yet the rapid expansion now being discussed for data center power comes with scrutiny that spans both economics and environmental impacts.

The technology has received billions in subsidies at federal and state levels. The California Low-Carbon Fuel Standard, a climate program implemented to incentivize alternative fuels, funds nearly 200 digesters across 16 states. In 2023, Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act provided over $150 million in funding to biogas projects across the country. And the Michigan Strategic Fund has approved more than $100 million in private bonds for digesters.

Akki says those tax credits are critical to making Ag-Grid Energy’s projects happen. While most subsidies for digester projects have gone toward electricity and transportation fuel, she wants fiscal support specifically for co-digesters that power AI.

“Tax credits — just like what we had with the Inflation Reduction Act — for electricity production for AI would really support our projects,” Akki said.

But the political winds appear to be shifting. Using taxpayer dollars to support digesters has lost favor with the Trump administration’s Department of Agriculture. In May. the USDA extended a 90-day moratorium on loans for anaerobic digesters through the end of the year amid environmental concerns and delinquent loans.

A review of USDA lender data by Inside Climate News found that 11 percent of the 746 project lenders across the country were considered over 90 days delinquent.

Even where funding exists, researchers say the climate and economic payoff is not as clean as the marketing suggests.

Government subsidies for digesters, some researchers argue, can create incentives that distort farming priorities. Brent Kim. a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Liveable Future. told Sentient that subsidies create a “perverse incentive where the value of manure or animal waste starts to compete with the value of the milk.” In his view. farmers are incentivized to produce waste for profit rather than produce milk for human consumption.

Kim and his colleagues published a scientific review of the touted benefits and downsides of the technology. “The reality is nuanced,” Kim said. While digesters can reduce methane emissions in the short term. he described the possibility of other pollutants rising. including ammonia emissions and other toxic byproducts—a phenomenon Kim calls “pollution swapping.”.

“So sure, all else being equal, you do have a reduction in methane, but if they’re incentivizing growth in the industry, the larger herd size is going to release more methane,” Kim said.

Some research also questions whether digesters reliably cut methane at all. A World Resources Institute study found digesters offer limited climate benefit given their cost. That research says digesters reduce methane from manure storage by only about 25 percent.

A report from Friends of the Earth found that dairies with digesters increased herd sizes by 3.7 percent annually—24 times the growth rate of dairies without digesters. In Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, herd sizes grew by about 58 percent since digesters were installed.

The downstream impact isn’t just a spreadsheet issue for some residents. Lynn Henning. a soybean farmer in Michigan who lives near a Chevron-owned co-digester. told Sentient that when manure becomes “more valuable than the milk. ” it changes incentives for farm growth and shifts the goal from producing food for people to producing manure that can be paid more by the government.

“The system is changing farming,” Henning said. “They’re shifting from producing food for people instead to producing manure so they can be paid more by the government.”

Kathy Morrison, a farmer in Fremont, Michigan, described a different kind of toll. She lived next to a co-digester for years and said it significantly impacted her quality of life. Morrison said the smell was unbearable—sometimes so bad it woke her up in the middle of the night. She described it as being like a giant music festival where the Porta Potties overflow. That smell, she said, was digestate: the liquid solid waste left over after digestion that is spread on fields.

Morrison said she is not against digesters themselves, particularly at the local level, but with private companies seeking profit, she said equitable implementation and scaling become hard to control. She also argued data centers would likely expand the opportunities for profit.

“I would be all in favor of small. very controlled. community-size digesters. but when they’re large scale like this. and they’re operating for profit. corners get cut. ” she said. “But this is something else,” she added. “All the different industries that have come together to turn this into something insanely profitable. …There’s just so many industries behind this. It’s wild.”.

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