Sam Arora today called on Maryland to invest in alternative energy projects such as “chicken-waste conversion” to keep Maryland at the forefront of the green economy.

“We need to secure Maryland’s energy future, and that means talking dirty,” Arora said. “It means talking about chicken manure. Investing in alternative energy sources is an innovative solution to an enduring challenge and will create green jobs in Maryland.”

The Obama Administration’s federal strategy for the Chesapeake region focuses on protecting and restoring the environment in communities throughout the 64,000-square-mile watershed and in its thousands of streams, creeks and rivers. Converting chicken manure to energy can help achieve that goal by eliminating harmful pollutants that enter our waterways and significantly reduce Maryland’s reliance on fossil fuels like coal.

The use of chicken waste as an energy source is one of the many specific policy plans Arora has proposed. Arora Tuesday called for the PSC to approve BGE’s “smart grid” proposal.

Helping Maryland Farmers
Broiler chickens generate over 1.2 billion pounds of manure in Maryland each year. Much of this waste runs off farmland into waterways, polluting Maryland waterways, including the Chesapeake Bay. The State currently levies fines on farmers who let their manure run off; however, this has not been effective in mitigating pollution. Using chicken manure as an alternative energy source will create a new market-based incentive for farmers to sell the manure to energy producers, resulting in fewer fines and a cleaner environment.

Power of Manure Energy
As a law clerk to Attorney General Doug Gansler, Arora worked on a plan to convert 500 million pounds of chicken manure on Maryland’s Eastern Shore into energy. Using chicken manure as alternative energy will decrease Maryland’s dependence from foreign oil and dirty coal by generating 45 megawatts of power for Maryland, which will provide a new source of revenue in a volatile economy and remove dangerous pollutants from the Chesapeake Bay. Arora is now pushing to bring that plan to Maryland.

The technology has already been successfully implemented elsewhere. In the Netherlands, a power plant using one-third of the country’s chicken manure creates enough energy to power approximately 90,000 households annually. Bringing biomass conversion to Maryland will help the state remain a national leader in alternative energy.

Maryland’s energy and environmental problems require increasingly creative solutions like investment in the expansion of alternative energies such as chicken manure. Such investment will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, mitigate waste runoff, and keep Maryland on the path to becoming a national leader at the forefront of the burgeoning green economy.