Saskatchewan’s agriculture and lumber industries produce about 24 million tonnes of biomass residue, which USask researchers are hoping to convert into green energy.

Dr. Ajay Dalai says that some of this left over biomass is used as animal feed and bedding, but a lot is left in fields or hauled to landfills where it rots and releases methane, which has a negative affect on our climate.

He and his team are hoping to help decarbonize the heating and power production sectors by replacing non-renewable natural gas with biomethane, also known as renewable natural gas, which would come from this agriculture and lumber industry leftovers.

One advantage is there are already natural gas pipelines across the country, so the method for distributing this green energy is already in place. The project will try both biochemical and thermochemical methods to produce the renewable natural gas to see which one works best, and would be most economically viable.