Agriculture waste has a significant negative impact on the environment, with 12% of the greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming coming from production of animal protein, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Swinergy, founded in 2022 and headquartered in Minneapolis, is working to solve that problem by rethinking traditional anaerobic digestion. The vision: a scalable system that can process livestock waste in a fraction of the time and double the extraction efficiency of current systems.

Anaerobic digestion is the natural process during which microorganisms break down organic matter without oxygen and create biogas, primarily methane and carbon dioxide. Anaerobic digesters—systems such as large tanks—capture these gases, rather than letting them escape into the atmosphere, and process them for a variety of energy needs. 

“Our carbon net-negative process harnesses the power of methane released by waste,” says Eugene Alvey, Swinergy’s CEO. “We’re developing a plant capable of producing power at the same reliability and cost as fossil fuel options, literally turning waste into wealth.”

In addition to being better for the environment, Swinergy’s anaerobic digester also benefits farmers. In exchange for the waste it collects from farmers, Swinergy will share profits from power generation with its partners, providing farmers with passive income. The company will not require any capital from farmers to set up, maintain, or share profits from the operation.

“We take care of the operation and setup, letting farmers focus on operating their farms,” says Alvey.

Swinergy is constructing its first commercial pilot on a 4,000-head swine farm in southern Minnesota, so completing that project is a top priority in the coming months. Additionally, the company plans to conduct testing on a new waste feedstock and identify all participants for its first full-scale, multi-farm processing facility, which is still in development, over the next year.

Though the swine market alone poses a $10 billion opportunity, breaking into the industry has had its challenges. “Inventing a new technology is tough, especially when your day-to-day includes coming in contact with animal manure,” says Alvey. “We’ve built a really incredible team, but finding that talent is hard. On top of that, a lot of investors are afraid of investing in capital-intensive businesses because they take longer to build and there is more risk when building physical products. It was a lot of work to find the right investors for us.”

Once pilot testing is complete, there will be plenty of potential participants for the processing facility. With 9 million hogs and pigs and more than 3,000 swine farms, Minnesota is the second-largest hog-producing state in the country (Iowa is first), making it an ideal launchpad for an agriculture company like Swinergy.

“Despite the huge hog population, there is currently no technology on the market that can process their waste into renewable natural gas,” says Alvey. “The market is wide open, and there are many corporate customers in the state who are interested in using renewable natural gas.”

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