RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A Colorado company is breaking ground on a Duplin County plant that will provide Duke Energy Corp. with power from pig poop.
Carbon Cycle Energy starts construction Thursday on its $100 million plant near Warsaw designed to convert animal waste into enough methane to power thousands of homes a year. The company will sell the fuel to an unidentified company and Duke Energy, which is required by North Carolina law to generate a small amount of its power from swine waste.
The state's 2,000 pork producers now collect liquefied waste in cesspools and spray it on planted fields.
Duke Energy already is burning methane from smaller projects, including one that draws the gas off the waste from more than 70,000 hogs on 10 adjoining farms in Duplin County.