Poop Power

Llama: Photo by law_keven (CC Licensed)

Will Brinton, the founder of Woods End Laboratories, a bioenergy consultancy, predicts a future without landfills. Instead we’ll use table scraps and sewage to power our homes. Just dump the waste into a household digester, and bacteria will break it down and release the natural gas methane. Farms could sell their copious poop-based energy supplies back to the grid. But how much energy do animals yield? We ran the numbers and found that you might want to consider a pet elephant.

MANURE MAKER	DAILY OUTPUT	METHANE YIELD	POOP POWER
Elephant	200 pounds	230 feet3/day	39 kilowatts*
Cow	120	95	16
Llama	16	18	3
Pig	2.5	3	0.5
Dog	0.75	1	0.2
Chicken	0.2	0.3	0.05

^*The average U.S. household consumes 30 kilowatts a day.