A Minnesota power plant will begin using renewable energy in June, creating enough power for 50,000 homes. While eco-friendly terms like “biomass,” “alternative fuel,” “environmentally sustainable” and “renewable energy” are being bandied about in connection with this story, this new power source is anything but animal-friendly.

The Fibrominn LLC power plant will convert fecal matter, feathers and other waste from factory farms, which house thousands upon thousands of birds in severe confinement. Ammonia from the waste that builds up where the birds live can cause painful burns to the birds' skin, eyes and respiratory tracts. The birds are debeaked to reduce pecking injuries in the seriously cramped quarters, and some of the mutilated birds starve to death because they can no longer eat. The end of the line for all of these birds is the slaughterhouse or rendering plant.

Minnesota, as the largest turkey-producing state in the U.S., was the logical site of the nation’s first “poultry litter-fired” power plant. Fibrominn has a 21-year contract to sell its factory farm-harvested power to Xcel Energy Inc., which is required by Minnesota law to use a certain proportion of biomass in its energy production. Similar plants are planned for other major poultry-producing states, such as Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi and North Carolina.

An estimated half-billion tons of turkey waste each year will be converted into electricity; this is less than half of what Minnesota factory farms create. Burning three tons of factory farm waste creates as much energy as one ton of coal.

"Obviously there aren't enough turkeys to generate enough poop to power a nation," former Clinton energy official Joseph Romm said in an Associated Press article. "On the scale of things, it's not a game-changer. ... It's certainly more good than bad."

I think turkeys on factory farms would beg to differ.