Our Cow Molly: 'amazing' Sheffield ice cream parlour plans to produce energy through cow slurry

You can either scale back beef and dairy usage, as per the advice from the Climate Change Committee.

Or as iconic Sheffield brand Our Cow Molly is doing, embrace cutting edge technology to move a three-generation dairy farm into the future.

The farm started in 1947, with Hector Andrew delivering milk from Dungworth across the seven hills of Sheffield.

Now, almost 80 years on the farm, now run by grandson Eddie, is synonymous with its pink vans, bright pink benches and delicious locally-made ice cream.

And thanks to working with SY Ecofit, a social enterprise based in Sheffield and helping the whole of South Yorkshire retrofit, it plans to produce 90 per cent of the required energy on site.

“It’s very easy to suggest reducing cow numbers,” SY Ecofit project developer Lizzie Stygall says of the CCC recommendation.

“That means farmers losing their jobs and if we reduce cows in this country all we are going to do is import more milk.

“It’s not as simple a solution as that, so what we’re looking to do is work with that farmer and decarbonise the farm.”

The key to the energy plans at Our Cow Molly is an anaerobic digester that breaks down the cow slurry - which is a mixture of manure, urine and water.

The digester will turn this into three things - hot water, electricity and digestate. SY Ecofit and Our Cow Molly are currently fundraising to install this and solar panels.

“The hot water can be used in the dairy in pasteurisation or it can be used to heat the farm,” Ms Stygall explains.

“The electricity can be used for the dairy buildings, so they’ve got things like robotic milking, which is incredibly efficient and more cow friendly,

“They’ve got all the churning and ice cream making processes, the fridges - all the rest of it.

“The last thing of that is the digestate - a fantastic natural fertiliser which is offsetting synthetic fertilisers, which are incredibly harmful to produce and import.”

This is even more useful because the price of synthetic fertilisers have shot up because of the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

On top of this, SY Ecofit is plannng to install some solar panels on the cattleshed roof to top up the electricity.

“With the combined technologies we’ll be looking at meeting about 90 per cent of the farm’s energy needs from energy generated right there on the site, which is pretty amazing,” Ms Stygall adds.

The technology would be fundraised by the community, but Our Cow Molly will eventually be given this by the Sheffield Energy Works Community Benefit Society.

“The farm will make incredible savings, but more importantly than that they will have energy stability,” Ms Stygall says.

“They have had issues with powercuts, they have had times when fuel prices have gone up so much they have removed themselves from the grid connection and run the farm off diesel because that was cheaper than buying electricity from the grid.

“It gives them stability for the next 25 years, after which they own the assets themselves.” Who said dairy had to be bad for the environment?