Economic and Environmental Analysis for Advancing Sustainable Management of Livestock Waste: A Wisconsin Case Study

Livestock waste may cause some air quality degradation from ammonia and methane emissions, soil quality detriment due to in-excess nutrients and acidification, and water pollution issues resulting from nutrient and pathogens runoff to water bodies, which leads to eutrophication, algal blooms, and hypoxia. Despite the significant environmental benefits by performing pollution management of these organic materials, the recovery of value-added products from livestock waste is not a current practice due to the high investment costs required and to the low market values being offered for the products that are recovered. Therefore, we present a supply chain design framework to conduct simultaneous economic and environmental analysis of post-livestock organic material to value-added products. The proposed framework captures techno-economic and logistical issues and can accommodate diverse types of policy incentives obtained at federal and state levels, allowing stakeholders to conduct systematic studies on the effect of incentives on economic and environmental viability of different technologies. We apply the framework to a case study for dairy farms in the State of Wisconsin (U.S.). The framework reveals that, from a purely economic perspective, products recovered from dairy waste are not competitive at current market prices. We also find that incorporating current and potential U.S. government incentives in the form of Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) and phosphorus credits can achieve economic viability of the recovery of liquefied biomethane and nutrient-rich products. On the other hand, current incentives for electricity generation (Renewable Energy Credits or RECs) would not achieve economic viability. The analysis also reveals that the best strategy to manage waste is to synergize the deployment of technologies that conduct simultaneous recovery of liquefied biomethane and nutrients.