Waste not, want not: Greenwood Dairy Farm & Liberty use waste to fuel the community
Five minutes on the Greenwood Dairy Farm is all you need to know it’s special. The Canton, New York farm has been in operation since 1978, when Jon Greenwood started with 80 cows. Now hovering around 1,600 cows, it’s a full circle operation – breeding cows, raising calves, feeding and milking the cows, and then taking what most farms would call “waste” and turning it into pipeline quality renewable energy.
In late 2024, Greenwood Dairy Farm became Liberty – New York Gas’s fourth renewable natural gas (RNG) injection site. Instead of letting the cow manure digest naturally and release methane into the atmosphere, Greenwood built an anaerobic digester that captures the gas naturally released from cow manure. The gas, which after digestion is about 60% methane, is fed through giant carbon filters that essentially “clean” the gas, removing harmful nitrogen disulfate, and bringing the gas to about 98% pure methane. From there, it’s pumped into Liberty’s system. Some of the RNG is distributed to customers, while about a third of the gas is pumped back to the farm, where it powers a massive generator that runs the farm. And the unused electricity is sold back to the electric grid.
Greenwood Dairy Farm has created a self-sustaining energy loop, producing value from every stage of its operation. Milk, manure, methane, and megawatts. Nothing goes to waste.
Equipment located at Greenwood Dairy Farm responsible for processing the methane to pipeline quality.
At Liberty, our mission is to sustain energy and water for life. That’s why we are proud to partner with innovators like Greenwood Dairy Farms. Being part of projects like this, that take cow waste and turn it into usable energy sources, is not just a win for us. It’s a win for our customers. It’s a win for the environment. And it’s a big win for Greenwood Dairy Farm.
