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CURRENT OFFSET PROJECTS

Farmer-Owned Distributed Wind Turbines

This project supports installations of German designed 40 kW Aeroman wind turbines that are remanufactured and customized for Midwest conditions.
With up-front funding, these turbines will help farmers reduce their long-term electricity costs, while helping stabilize the electricity grid with distributed, small scale power generation. 18 turbines were being built in 2007. Thirty turbines are planned for 2008.

Current support is going to:

• The Burkhalter Farm in Minnesota.
• Marty Espenson’s farm in Minnesota (Pictured below)
• Dean Harder’s farm in Minnesota
• Peter Samuelson’s farm in Minnesota.
• Charles & Louise Worm’s farm in Lakefield, Minnesota.
• Steve and Jane Tiedeman's farm in Woodstock, Minnesota.
• The Overgaard family farm in Minnesota.
• Neil and Tammy Bartel's farm in Mountain Lake, Minnesota.
• Dean Tofteland's farm in Minnesota.
• Barry and Tami Bork's farm in Valley Springs, South Dakota.
• The Peterson family farm in Minnesota.
• Roddy Hanson's farm in Butterfield, Minnesota.
• Mark Hanson's farm in Mountain Lake, Minnesota.
• The Schroepfer farm in Comfrey, Minnesota.

Wanner Farm Dairy Farm Methane Project

Seven generations of the Wanner family have developed the Wanner's Pride-N-Joy Farm located in Narvon, PA, in eastern Lancaster County. The farm was founded in 1840, and is operated today as a dairy by Alfred Wanner and his two sons, Matt and John, with 600 milking cows. Their goal is to keep the farm a viable economic unit for future generations. Based on the Wanner family's long-standing commitment to environmental stewardship, a major component of their dairy expansion plans is building the modern and efficient manure management system that will be both labor efficient and improve the environment.

In early 2006, the Wanner’s began to improve their manure management system by constructing increased manure storage capacity, manure solids separation, and an anaerobic digester. The anaerobic digester produces approximately 2,000 kWh of electricity each day, more than 3 times the amount of electricity the farm currently uses. The Wanners sell surplus generic electricity to their power provider and carbon offsets help fund the project. Other benefits from the project include producing digested manure solids, which after composting can be sold to landscaping contractors. Digested manure liquids, which are essentially made odorless by the process, will be irrigated on nearby fields as natural fertilizer. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, so this project prevents methane from entering the atmosphere.