Common Questions
What Farmers Ask Us
Frequently Asked Questions
Why 5%?+
Real estate agents charge 5% for selling your house — that takes a few weeks. We charge 5% for managing your credits, your gas sales, your compliance, and your monitoring — that takes years. And we only get paid when you get paid.
ACC's 5% management fee is performance-based — charged exclusively on realised credit revenue. The fee covers: carbon intensity assessment and ongoing LCA recalculation, federal and provincial grant identification and application, ECCC CFR-CATS pathway registration and maintenance, annual compliance reporting and third-party verification coordination, credit aggregation across the managed portfolio for volume pricing, institutional credit sales to obligated parties, RNG offtake contract negotiation and management, IoT monitoring infrastructure and data management, field maintenance coordination, and farmer proceeds calculation and distribution. The comparable fee in the SR&ED consulting sector is 15–25% of eligible expenditure.
How long until I see money?+
Approximately 15–18 months from first visit to first credit cheque. During that time, your digester begins generating bedding, fertiliser, and heating savings immediately upon operation.
What about the extra biogas I can't use?+
Surplus biogas can generate electricity, be upgraded to renewable natural gas for pipeline injection at 4–12× conventional gas prices,
[10] or be compressed as vehicle fuel. Each option generates additional credits we manage for you. The surplus is a second revenue stream we develop over time.
Can I do this myself?+
In theory, yes — the portal is public. In practice, it requires lifecycle analysis in two government software tools, third-party verification, annual compliance filings, and credit aggregation. That's why 98% of agricultural methane goes uncaptured. See our
Decision Sheet above for details.
What provinces do you serve?+
All except Quebec. Ontario and BC are primary markets. BC farms earn roughly double because the provincial LCFS stacks with the federal programme.
[15] Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Atlantic provinces are served on an expanding schedule.
What if Poilievre kills the carbon tax?+
The consumer carbon tax — the one at the gas pump — is politically vulnerable. But your credits are sold under the Output-Based Pricing System and the Clean Fuel Regulations — the industrial compliance mechanisms that require large emitters and fuel producers to buy offset credits. These have bipartisan industry support because they protect Canadian exporters from carbon border adjustments. Repealing the OBPS would expose Canadian manufacturers to trade penalties from Europe and the United States. No Prime Minister is going to invite a trade war to score a domestic political point.
Do we have to decide right now?+
No. Talk about it. Print the legislation and read it — it's public. Call us back when you're ready. The only thing that costs you anything is saying no to $284,000 a year.
Am I locked in for 20 years?+
No. The 20-year figure on this site is the projected equipment lifespan and the revenue horizon — it is not a contract term. The ACC service agreement is a 3-year auto-renewing contract. Either party can terminate with 90 days written notice. No penalty. No buyout. No breach of contract.
If you stop milking and switch to cash crops, no manure goes into the digester, no methane is produced, no credits are generated, and ACC's fee on zero revenue is zero. You give us 90 days notice and the agreement ends. The digester stays on your property as your asset — decommission it, sell it, or leave it for the next owner.
If you sell the farm, the new owner can sign a new agreement with ACC and pick up where you left off — or not. The digester is a permanent improvement to the property, like a barn. It makes the farm more valuable whether it's running or sitting idle.
The compliance pathway registered with ECCC is an entitlement to create credits, not an obligation to create them. If you stop producing, the pathway sits dormant. Nobody from the government calls.
You are never locked in. You are never sued for stopping. The agreement exists because both sides benefit from it. The day it stops benefiting you, you leave.
Technical & Operational Questions — For Working Farms
These questions came from a dairy operation in Oxford County. If your farm raises questions like these, you're exactly who we built this for.
My herd is on sand bedding. Can the digester handle that?+
Sand is the most common digester compatibility issue in Ontario dairy. It settles in the tank, abrades pumps, and reduces effective volume. A standard digester will struggle with sand-laden manure without a pre-separation system upstream — a sand lane or settling basin costing $40,000–$80,000 installed.
But here's what most sand-bedding farmers don't realise until we run the numbers: switching to straw or shavings before installation often pays for itself immediately — because the digester produces your bedding at no additional cost. Separated fibre from the digestate replaces purchased bedding material. Ontario operations running organic bedding with a digester typically save $40,000–$60,000 per year in bedding costs alone. That's a saving you collect on top of the carbon credit revenue, not instead of it.
So the sand question isn't really “can the digester handle sand.” The question is “why are you still buying sand when the digester produces your bedding from your own manure?” The audit will model both paths — sand separation upstream versus bedding conversion — and show you which one puts more money in your pocket. For most Ontario dairy operations, the answer is: ditch the sand, save $50,000 a year, and get a digester that runs without complications.
Does adding a digester trigger a change to my Nutrient Management Plan?+
Yes. In Ontario, installing an anaerobic digester on a farm subject to the Nutrient Management Act constitutes a material change to your manure storage and handling system. You will need an updated Nutrient Management Strategy (NMS) or Plan (NMP), engineered drawings for the building permit, and OMAFRA approval. The good news: digestate from an anaerobic digester is a superior fertiliser product with more predictable nutrient content than raw manure, so the updated NMP often shows improved nutrient management — which OMAFRA likes. ACC coordinates the NMP update and the municipal building permit application in East Zorra-Tavistock or whatever township you're in. The engineering is subcontracted to a licensed Ontario engineer with anaerobic digestion experience. This is included in the project management scope — you don't hire your own engineer. The cost is built into the overall project budget covered by grants and financing.
My farm is 2 km from the nearest gas main. Who pays for the pipeline?+
This is one of the most important questions in the feasibility audit. If your farm is within 500 metres of a high-pressure Enbridge main, pipeline interconnection is typically $50,000–$150,000 and can be included in the project capital stack covered by grants and financing. At 2 km, the interconnection cost rises significantly — potentially $300,000–$500,000 depending on terrain, road crossings, and municipal permits. At that distance, on-farm utilisation — heating barns, drying grain, displacing propane — or compressed biogas trucking may be more economic than grid injection. The audit assesses this specific question for your farm: where is the nearest main, what's the interconnection estimate, and does the RNG revenue justify the connection cost or is on-farm use the better play? If grid injection doesn't pencil out, your carbon credit revenue is unaffected — credits come from methane capture, not from what you do with the gas afterward. The gas utilisation strategy changes your secondary revenue stream, not your primary one.
How much gas does the digester burn just to keep itself warm in an Ontario winter?+
Parasitic heat load is real and it matters in Ontario. A mesophilic digester operates at 35–40°C. In a sustained –25°C cold snap, the heating demand can consume 25–35% of the biogas produced — roughly a quarter to a third of your methane output goes back into keeping the tank warm. In milder months, parasitic load drops to 10–15%. The annual average for Southwestern Ontario is approximately 20–25% of gross biogas production consumed as process heat. The revenue estimates in our calculator and feasibility reports account for this. The emission factors reflect net methane available after process heat — what you see in the calculator is what you'd actually sell or use, not the gross theoretical output. Biolectric's containerised systems are insulated and designed for Northern European climates — Belgium, Netherlands, Scandinavia — which have comparable winter conditions to Southwestern Ontario. This is not a tropical technology being forced into a cold climate. It was built for one.
How does digester financing interact with my existing farm debt?+
This depends on your specific balance sheet, and it's a question your banker and your accountant need to answer — not us. What we can tell you: the digester loan will appear as a new liability on your farm's financial statements. If it's financed through FCC, it will show alongside your existing FCC mortgage and equipment loans. Whether the lender requires a first-priority lien on the digester equipment, a subordinate charge on land, or a general security agreement depends on the lender's credit assessment and your existing security arrangements. ACC's role is to prepare the loan package — the carbon feasibility report, the revenue projections, the DSCR analysis — and present it to your lender alongside you. We do not provide financing advice and we cannot tell you how a new $300,000 liability will affect your operating line renewal. What we can show your banker is that the new liability comes with a new revenue stream that covers the debt service nine times over. Most bankers find that persuasive. But the conversation about how it fits your existing capital structure is between you, your banker, and your CPA.
Can I bring in off-farm waste to boost gas production?+
Co-digestion — adding food waste, fats, oils, grease, or other organic feedstocks alongside manure — can significantly increase biogas yield, sometimes doubling or tripling the output of a manure-only system. For a 135-cow dairy that might be marginal as a standalone RNG project, co-digestion can tip the economics from viable to very strong. However, there are complications. Receiving off-farm organic waste in Ontario requires registration or approval under the Nutrient Management Act and potentially Ontario Regulation 347 for waste management. The carbon intensity score changes — the CI value of your RNG depends on the lifecycle emissions of all feedstocks, and adding commercial food waste introduces transportation emissions and different baseline assumptions. Co-digestion may affect eligibility for certain credit pathways designed specifically for agricultural manure. The feasibility audit will assess whether co-digestion makes sense for your operation and model the economics, the regulatory requirements, and the impact on your CI score. The 5% fee structure doesn't change — it applies to whatever credit revenue your project generates, regardless of feedstock mix.
If something breaks on a Sunday morning, who's coming to fix it?+
In Year 1, honestly — it might be a phone call to Martin Energy Group in Carleton Place, which is three hours from Tavistock. That's not ideal and we won't pretend it is. Biolectric systems are remotely monitored — temperature, pressure, gas flow, pH — and most issues are detected before they become emergencies. But a physical pump failure or a biological upset on a Sunday morning needs hands on site. As ACC's Ontario farm network grows past 15–20 active digesters, a full-time field technician based in Southwestern Ontario is the plan — someone within an hour of Tavistock who knows these systems and carries the parts. Until then, the realistic answer is: remote diagnosis within hours, a technician on site within 24–48 hours for non-emergency issues, and an emergency call-out arrangement with Martin Energy Group for critical failures. Your digester has redundant systems — if one pump fails, the system doesn't die, it operates at reduced capacity until the repair. But if you're expecting same-day guaranteed Sunday morning service from day one, we don't have that yet. We will.
What if the next owner doesn't want the carbon contract?+
The ACC service agreement is between ACC and the farm operator — it's attached to you, not to the land. If you sell the farm, the new owner can assume the agreement and the revenue, or decline it. If they decline, ACC's agreement terminates. The digester stays — it's a permanent improvement to the property, like a barn or a milking parlour. There is no lien on the equipment preventing decommissioning. There is no buyout clause that penalises you for selling. If the digester was financed and the loan is still active, the loan obligation transfers with the property or is settled at closing — same as any other farm mortgage or equipment loan. The new owner inherits either a performing asset generating $280,000+ per year, or a piece of equipment they can decommission if they choose. Your real estate lawyer handles the transfer at closing. ACC facilitates the paperwork for the service agreement transfer if the buyer wants to continue.
If I sell the credits to Shell, can I still claim Net Zero for the DFC?+
No. This is a real tension and you're right to flag it. When you sell carbon credits to an obligated party like Shell, you are transferring the environmental attribute — the verified emission reduction — to Shell. Shell uses that credit to offset their compliance obligation. You cannot then claim that same reduction toward your own farm's sustainability metrics. You've sold it.
The Dairy Farmers of Canada's Net Zero by 2050 pathway recognises on-farm emission reductions. If you capture your methane and retire the credit yourself — don't sell it — you can claim the reduction. If you sell it, the buyer claims it. You can't have both.
What you can do: capture the methane, sell some credits, retire some credits. The economics of partial retirement depend on how many credits you need for DFC recognition versus how many you want to sell for revenue. ACC can model this for your specific operation. The honest answer is that most farmers will sell the credits because $250,000 per year is worth more to their operation than a sustainability badge. But if Net Zero certification matters to your brand, your processor relationship, or your DFC standing, we can structure a programme that balances revenue with retained environmental claims.
If the gas is being trucked to a hub, aren't you hauling 40% dead weight?+
Raw biogas is approximately 60% methane and 40% CO₂, water vapour, and trace gases. If we truck raw biogas, yes — we're paying to move waste gas, and the diesel emissions from that truck count against the lifecycle carbon intensity score, which lowers the value of the credits.
That's why the feasibility audit assesses your gas handling options before anything gets built. There are three paths depending on your farm's location and volume. First, if you're close to an Enbridge or FortisBC main, on-farm upgrading to pipeline-quality RNG is the best option — the gas is scrubbed and injected at the farm, nothing is trucked. Second, if you're in a cluster of ACC farms within a reasonable radius, a regional upgrading hub makes sense — biogas is partially cleaned on-farm (H₂S removal, dewatering) and trucked short distances for final upgrading. Third, if you're remote and low-volume, on-farm utilisation — heating barns, displacing propane, drying grain — keeps the gas on-site with zero transportation emissions.
What we don't do is truck raw wet biogas long distances. The CI math doesn't support it and we won't pretend it does. If your farm's location means trucking is the only option and the distance kills the margin, the audit will tell you that. We'd rather lose the deal than build a project with bad lifecycle economics.
What if something goes wrong with the digester and nobody's nearby?+
The Biolectric system is continuously monitored through an IoT platform — temperature, pressure, gas composition, flow rates, pH, motor current draw, tank levels. But this isn't a dashboard that sends you an alert when something breaks. It's a predictive system that sees problems developing days or weeks before they become failures.
A mixer motor doesn't burn out without warning. The current draw changes. The temperature drifts. The flow rate drops. The system flags the trend, ACC's monitoring team sees it, and a replacement part is dispatched or a service visit is scheduled before the motor fails. The lagoon doesn't overflow because the system manages flow rates and alerts when capacity is approaching — not when it's too late.
The digester itself is largely automated. Feeding, heating, mixing, and gas handling operate on programmed cycles. The farmer doesn't touch it during normal operation. When physical maintenance is needed — a valve replacement, a sensor calibration, a pump service — it's scheduled during a planned visit, not a Sunday morning emergency.
Can a catastrophic, unforeseeable failure happen? Yes, the same way a barn roof can collapse. But the IoT system is designed so that the realistic failure mode is a gradual decline that gets caught early, not a sudden breakdown that leaves manure on the floor. The goal is that the first time you notice anything about the digester is when the service technician's truck pulls into your yard for a visit you didn't have to request.
