At first glance, Lent Hill Dairy Farm in Steuben County, New York, looks like any other industrial dairy: red buildings housing some 4,000 cows, a staggering manure pit, and two giant dome-like anaerobic co-digesters. These machines break down manure and local food waste to produce biogas - renewable natural gas (RNG) typically used for electricity, heating, and fuel. But at Lent Hill, that gas isn't just heating homes; it's also powering an on-site cryptomine. The operation, run by Pennsylvania-based Ag-Grid Energy, claims to be the first of its kind in the country, and they see it as a game-changer for data centers, which already guzzle 4.9 percent of U.S. electricity - a figure that could double by 2030.
"At the end of the day, our model is providing value to the rural area that we are in," Rashi Akki, founder and CEO of Ag-Grid Energy, told Sentient. The project recycles more than 45,000 gallons of food waste per day and the manure of 4,000 cows. Akki dreams of bringing AI computing capacity to the same regional area via fiber optics. Meanwhile, tech giants like Microsoft have partnered with Enchanted Rock in California to use RNG for backup data center power, and Vanguard Renewables has touted RNG as "the fuel of the AI age." Critics, however, fear this gives digesters an economic lifeline when they're struggling to stay online.
Sarah D'Onofrio, a scholar and advocate working with digester-impacted communities, notes that RNG is a "drop-in energy solution" - it can be used without changing fossil fuel infrastructure, allowing companies to claim sustainable data centers. But she argues that true emission reduction requires transitioning to clean energy, not just renewable substitutes. "Why would you want to incorporate that [RNG] into our fuel system during the period of climate change?" she asked. D'Onofrio has helped communities in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina defeat large-scale co-digester proposals, fearing data centers are creating a massive market for manure-to-energy that incentivizes more factory farms. "It attaches these industrial food operations into our energy system and makes us really dependent on them over time," she said.
Factory farms in the U.S. produce an estimated 941 billion pounds of manure annually, polluting air and water. Digesters don't make manure disappear; the leftover digestate can be more polluting than untreated manure, per USDA research. In Lind, Wisconsin, community organizer Victoria Gehrke fought a proposed co-digester that planned to send 41,000 gallons of waste daily into a tributary of Walla Walla Creek, which empties into Lake Michigan. After over a year of opposition, Lind denied Vanguard's application in spring 2024. But Vanguard is still "developing and operating" over 50 co-digesters nationwide, aiming for 100 by end of 2028. Patrick Serfass of the American Biogas Council says biogas is an "excellent fit" for data centers, and that data centers could "eat up pretty much all of the supply that the biogas industry could create."
Anaerobic digesters have received billions in subsidies, from California's Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (funding nearly 200 digesters across 16 states) to the Inflation Reduction Act's $150 million for biogas projects in 2023. But the Trump administration's USDA extended a 90-day moratorium on digester loans through end of 2025 amid environmental concerns and delinquent loans - 11 percent of 746 project lenders were over 90 days delinquent. Research questions the economic and environmental sense: digesters reduce methane from manure storage by only about 25 percent, per the World Resources Institute, and can lead to "pollution swapping" - increasing ammonia emissions and toxic byproducts. A Friends of the Earth report found dairies with digesters increased herd sizes by 3.7 percent annually, 24 times the growth rate of those without. In Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, herd sizes grew by about 58 percent since digesters were installed.
Farmers like Lynn Henning in Michigan note that when manure becomes "more valuable than the milk," farming shifts from producing food to producing waste for government payments. Kathy Morrison, also in Michigan, lived next to a co-digester and described the smell as "being at a giant music festival and all the Porta Potties are overflowing." She supports small, community-size digesters but fears large-scale profit-driven operations cut corners. "All the different industries that have come together to turn this into something insanely profitable," she said.