Exploring
⚙ Runs on the Energy engine — can meter gas/heat output, :5940.
One small digester at the commons turning concentrated organic streams — barn manure, kitchen, greenhouse — into cooking gas and fertilizer. Not a humanure scheme.
If biogas earns its place, it's as a single small digester at the built commons — fed by the streams already gathered in one spot: manure from a commons barn, food scraps from the lodge kitchen, trimmings from the greenhouse. In goes the organic waste; out comes cooking/heating gas and digestate, a rich liquid fertilizer for the gardens.
To be clear, because people always ask: this does not collect from toilets. Human waste alone is a poor biogas feedstock (low volume, wrong carbon balance), and hauling it from 500 lots makes no sense. Sanitation stays per-lot and decentralized. Biogas runs on concentrated farm and kitchen waste — nothing more.
The honest limit: a digester's bacteria need warmth (~35°C), and a Kootenay winter means you'd spend energy heating the digester to make energy — the math gets thin Nov–March. So it's sized modestly, well-insulated, likely paired with greenhouse heat, and treated as a shoulder-season bonus, not a winter workhorse. Maybe worth it, maybe not — that's what "exploring" means.
The real prize may be the digestate as much as the gas: waste from the table and barn becomes fertility back in the food system. Waste → energy → soil → food → waste. A circle.
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Silvanus