St. Paul Port Authority has gained unanimous support from the City Council to develop a once-controversial biogas plan, Star Tribune reports.
The biogas plan is aiming to pipe rural Minnesota manure and ethanol byproducts to urban paper recycler Rock-Tenn. The move would help keep 475 jobs at the plant. As part of the plan, the plant would have to agree to stay in St. Paul for 10 years.
Rock-Tenn has been burning a mixture of natural gas and fuel oil since it lost its source of steam energy when Xcel Energy closed its coal-fired plant on the Mississippi.
In August, Diageo announced it would run its largest distillery in Scotland on bioenergy.
Anheuser-Busch is also generating 15 percent of its fuel needs at its Fairfield brewery from a bio-energy recovery system.