How does that sayng go, "The more things change, the more they remain the same." I would avoid expecting too much from the politicians, be they black or white, male or female, red state or blue state. The last elections were won 100% by politicans.

Your idea of upgraded biogas stored on the farm is intriquing, assuming that the motorized equipment has been converted to run on natural gas and can run on the eventual product from the anaerobic digestion.

Then, again, I remember seeing a news clip from the 1950s. A fly-over from a major catastrophe in Texas. A number of train cars of methane blowing up. In other words, who would want to live next to a bomb?

Methane storage tanks, natural gas that is or biogas, all the same thing really, are very common. Anyway it would only be needed in larger quantities on farms, landfill, or sewage treatment sites. There it is easy to control the risk posed by natural gas leaks. of course natural gas pipelines are everywhere so we accept that risk already.

Talk about risk though. methane hybrate ice is melting on the tundra and undersea. A huge positive feedback loop about to spin out of control in the climate cycle.

The good part is that the soil still contains many times the sequesteed carbon as the atmosphere does in the form of GHG. And chemical ag land can be restored to organic farm land to soak up huge amounts of gHG. And biogas digestors prevent huge releases of stored carbon from manure run off.

Another risk is LNG tankers, liquified natuiral gas, biogas would replace this dangerous expensive proccess. An energy source dependent on foreign sources, as well as ammonia for chemical fertilizer, is shipped in posing a spill threat.

Biogas energy supplies organic fertilizer that replaces ammonia. Yep diesel tractors can run on biogas, bobcats and other equipment with diesel engines too. Farm trucks. It's all standard now. landfills run garbage trucks on compressed natural gas.

The best procedure though would be to use the biogas to backup a renewable smart grid, charge up plugin hybrid farm equipment from solar and wind power and use compressed biogas only after plugin batteries are used up, after 60 miles or so.

A bobcat for instance, could have the hydraulics powered by an electric motor with batteries, then a small diesel generator could power the electric motor as a backup.

A grid normally powered by a 1000 mw nuke or coal plant, with a smart grid design instead, would only need 20 or so 20 mw distributed generators running on biogas to back it up. the rest of the kwh needed would come from rooftop solar, wind, water, wave.. renewable GHG free sources. That use no fuel, there by negating the main source of inflation.

Never rising energy prices. With renewables and conservation vastly reducing demand (Amory Lovins home use one tenth the normal electric power) and energy bought from the farmer down the road instead of the saudis.

Hm, yes and no, upgraded biogas, that is when further processed is equivalent to natural gas. The challenge would be cost effective upgrading for adding to the gas pipeline.

Yes, electric motors are more efficient and your suggestion requires significant re-tooling. Sunk costs. Whereas, conversion to multi-fuel requires much less investment.

Then, the excess, upgraded biogas can go into the pipeline while the motorized farm equipment uses the fuel. The incentive to switch to more efficient electric drive wil be profit, i.e., selling the gas to the pipeline will become more and more profitable, so the farmer will want to use less for the equipment.

Also, I would caution about an apples and oranges comparison with landfill gas. LFG requires much more cleaning to be safe for the usage discussed.

Landfill gas is already in use for eqipment at the landfills and garbage trucks.

Adding biogas to natural gas pipelines yields lower profits than convertuing it to clean kwh to backup a renewable smart grid. Government can afford to pay 10 cents per kwh on top of utility payments to farmers.

Filtration of the biogas is well tested and inexpensive. Solid oxide fuel cells are too, they are in proftable use right now at several breweries, supplying electricity and cogenerated process steam cost effectively from the bewery waste stream biogas.

These schemes are all energy revolutionary and need new government policy in the form of subsidfies to get them going, but they are practical and cost effective right now.

One more big advantage for farmers though (and GHG balance), biogas energy makes organic fertilizer as a byproduct. Eliminate fertilizer costs, soaring because ammonia is now imported on tankers from Russia, ask a farmer, how would your profit picture change with zero cost fertilizer?

Let's have a revolution! Oily fossil, nuclear war bidness as usual is mortgaging our future to china and Saudi arabia. I don't trust them to act in our best interests, do you? hehey.