Video by Joe O’Neill; article by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro recently visited the Dickinson College Farm to learn about its award-winning biodigester project. He was not disappointed.

“Think of what’s happening,” Shapiro marveled, speaking with fellow onlookers at the site of the innovative green-energy project. “They’re turning waste to energy.”

The college’s new anaerobic digester converts food waste and manure into biogas, a burnable, renewable, carbon-neutral energy source that can be used for cooking, heating and generating electricity. It is the only college farm project in the Northeast to serve as a net exporter of clean energy.

The biodigester, which holds about 115,000 gallons of liquified waste underground, will process the manure from 150 dairy cows and two tons of food waste every day, said Matt Steiman, assistant director and energy-projects director of the College Farm. This will generate more than enough renewable energy to power the farm’s operations; excess clean energy will be sold back to the power company and used to power neighboring homes and farms. The biodigester project also stands to reduce water pollution to local streams and the Chesapeake Bay.

After seeing the innovative system in person, Shapiro said he’s grateful for Dickinson’s commitment to sustainability and the college’s leadership in sustainability education and research.

“The work that farmers do every day is to feed people … and we understand more and more that that work requires us to have a focused strategy,” Shapiro said. “What you’ve built here at the Dickinson Farm should be a model for the rest of Pennsylvania.”