Could your lawn save the planet?
Green gas: a redemption story
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I take it all back. Grass, if you’re reading, I’m sorry.
Some context. I have written at length about my lack of love for lawns. High maintenance, biodiversity-devoid monocultures, most lawns are the outdoor equivalent of a cheap white carpet: rough underfoot, always looks a mess.
In the past, when I have seen rolling, manicured lawns – around a grand stately home, for instance – I have felt my blood pressure rise. What a waste! These spaces, with only minimal human intervention, could be turned into wildlife-welcoming woodlands, or sweeping meadows, full of floriferous, nectar-rich perennials and self-sown wildflowers, a feast for human eyes and pollinator tummies alike.
So no, grass’s ecological and environmental credentials don’t hold much weight. Whether it’s feeding a heavily polluting livestock industry or being used to mark the bounds of human property – like a sign that reads “Nature: keep out” – you could argue that there is nothing green about grass.
But that could all be about to change.
We received an email recently from our energy supplier, Ecotricity. At this point I should point out that I have not been asked to talk about this company, and I am not being paid to do so. I have never had any contact with anyone at Ecotricity, beyond the salesperson who signed us up to their “dual fuel” gas and electricity product a few years ago, and the increasingly expensive bills we receive from them each month.
We’ve been with Ecotricity for a few years, and chose them over their rivals because of their commitment to sourcing all of their energy from renewable sources. This year, 100% of the electricity they supplied to customers like us came from renewables: wind, solar and hydro. But there has always been a large carbon-emitting elephant in the Ecotricity boardroom, and its name is Gas.
Whichever way you cut it, natural gas is not an environmentally friendly product. You can frack it; you can pump it out of suboceanic “fields”; you can pipe it in from Russia (or rather, you used to be able to); but wherever you source it from (at sky-rocketing cost), natural gas is a fossil fuel, and thus responsible for releasing catastrophic quantities of carbon into the atmosphere that weren’t there before.
There is nothing eco or renewable or sustainable or green about natural gas. Which is a problem, because most of us rely on gas-fuelled boilers to heat our homes (among other domestic necessities). Alternative ways of keeping our homes warm during winter, such as heat pumps, already exist, but even if these became more affordable to install, the infrastructure implications of switching millions of households over from gas boilers to heat pumps are as complex as they are costly.
Believe it or not, this is where grass comes back into the story. In a plot twist worthy of an early Christopher Nolan film, grass, the much-maligned villain of the piece, could be about to save the day. Coming soon to a movie theatre near you, Earthworm Pictures presents Grass: A Redemption Story.
You see, Ecotricity will soon be commencing production, and in turn supply, of a new product: green gas. There is a double-meaning behind this name. The first is to do with its environmental impact; the second, the fact that this gas is generated entirely from grass. Yes, grass. Regular, run-of-the-mill grass.
It works a little something like this. Step 1) Farmers grow grass. Normal grass. Grass which can grow on poor soil (therefore not cannibalising land that could otherwise be used for growing arable crop). Grass which pulls CO2 out of the air in order to grow.
Step 2) This grass is harvested (aka mown) four times each year.
Step 3) The grass is taken to a “green gas mill”, where it undergoes a process of anaerobic digestion not dissimilar to that which takes place inside a cow’s stomach. This produces biomethane, aka green gas. (It also produces a waste product, which is used to fertilise future crops.)
Step 4) Green gas is piped into households up and down the country, warming our homes. Of course, this process releases carbon back into the atmosphere. But – and this is crucial – only the same carbon which the grass had removed from the air in the first place, and which the next grass crop will use in order to fuel its own growth. And so the circular, sustainable cycle continues.
The “milling” process may be technologically complex, but conceptually at least, this closed loop system is astonishingly simple. And even though it has taken years, if not decades, if not centuries, for anyone to conceive of green gas, when you (figuratively) boil it down, it is a tale as old as plant life itself. Because green gas isn’t too far removed from composting.
Not all of us have access to the space or resources required to garden in a truly closed-loop way, but in theory it is the easiest, cheapest, most sustainable way to go about our horticultural business.
If you’re unfamiliar with the composting process, it goes a little something like this: all of our garden waste – grass clippings, hedge trimmings, shrub prunings, autumn leaves, spent annuals – gets tossed onto the compost heap, along with our food waste, cardboard packaging, newspaper scraps and whatnot. A few months later, this rotting heap is transformed into compost, a nutrient-rich brown gold that can be forked back onto the soil to feed the next generation of botanical growth.
New life springing from death and decay. This is the poetry of plants, and one of the great miracles of gardening.
The fact that a company like Ecotricity is investing in this green gas technology is encouraging. The fact that other companies might follow suit, and eventually eliminate our suffocating dependence on natural gas, is genuinely exciting.
Obviously I can see how it could all go wrong, with vast swathes of fields currently devoted towards food production being turned over to the newly profitable business of growing grass (despite what the Ecotricity marketing material might state). And ideally, I suppose, we wouldn’t emit any carbon into the atmosphere, at all, even a recycled version of that which was already there.
But I can also imagine a world in which people with large lawns are able to use their own clippings towards heating their homes – much in the same way that some people have solar panels on their rooftops. A world in which large parks become gas fields, fuelling their surrounding communities’ energy needs.
Maybe I’m being naive. Maybe I’ve read too many science fiction novels. Maybe green gas won’t take off. Maybe it’ll prove to be too expensive or inefficient, or some powerful vested interest or market force will stifle its development. But I for one am backing the antihero. I want to believe in redemption. I am putting my faith in grass – pointless, lawn-squatting grass – to change its ways, fulfil its destiny, and fly to the planet’s rescue, right when we need it most.
How do you feel about grass? Did you see this plot twist coming all along? Do you think green gas is a viable alternative to fossil fuels?
Picture credit: Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash
I love grass. I also love the busyness of woodlands, but there’s something very calming about great zen-like expanses of green. But the best thing in your article isn’t that this tech might work, but that people are trying alternatives. The minute we start mandating future technologies, like the EV car in transport, we’re lost. No one knows from where the planets salvation will come, but no tech should be out of the conversation.