Green Options » landfill gas

Fuel from Trash Will Power California Garbage Trucks

Sarah Lozanova — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:40:12 +0000

300 garbage collection trucks in California will soon be fueled by the same trash that they haul. Landfill gas will be purified and liquefied, producing up to 13,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) daily.

This facility at Waste Management’s (WMI: NYSE) Altamont Landfill in Livermore, California will begin operation in 2009. It comes with a price tag of $15.5 million, with grants providing $1.4 million.

Cleaner Fuel

Waste Management is the largest waste management company in North America and operates the largest US fleet of heavy-duty collection trucks. The company has a goal to reduce fleet emissions by 15% by 2020.

The new facility will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 30,000 tons per year, according to Linde North America. LNG is a cleaner burning transportation fuel that emits less nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and particulates than diesel-fueled vehicles.

Duane Woods, senior vice president, Western group of Waste Management, said, “This will be the largest plant of its kind and we hope to break new ground by producing commercial quantities. Natural gas is already the cleanest burning fuel available for our collection trucks, and the opportunity to use recovered landfill gas offers enormous environmental benefits to the communities we serve.”

Demand for Low-carbon Fuels

California passed a law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020 and other states may follow. Demand for low-carbon fuels is expected to increase significantly in California as the state starts requiring a decrease in carbon emissions. Waste Management will be ahead of the curve by having plants like this in operation, creating lucrative business opportunities.

Chicago Generates Twice the Energy for a Third of the Carbon

Sarah Lozanova — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:06:36 +0000

When generating electricity, roughly two-thirds of the energy is lost. Heat is created as a byproduct to spin turbines and later wastes away in cooling towers. Chicago has committed to produce 1.5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity by 2010 with a process call combined heat and power or cogeneration, which finds use for the generated heat. This process can be over 90% efficient.

Excess heat can be used for dehumidification, heating water, and process heat. In an ideal world, the electricity and heating loads for the given application are similar. Hospitals, prisons, paper mills, oil refineries, waste water treatment centers, and even large towns can be good candidates for this technology. Your car can even be an example, with waste heat from the engine being used to warm the interior.
Case study: Antioch Community High School

Twelve micro-turbines are powered by landfill gas (LFG), producing .36 megawatt hours of electricity and heat for the 250,000 square foot school. This was the first high school in the country to utilize LFG for this purpose and savings are an estimated $100,000 annually in energy costs.

LFG is pumped from an adjacent landfill, which was previously a superfund site. The annual greenhouse gas reduction is equal to removing 3,000 cars from the road.

Case study: Chicago Museum of Science and Industry

Since 1933, the museum has been one of the largest tourist attractions for the city and now has another noteworthy feature. A 1.75 megawatt cogeneration system was recently installed that produces electricity, heat, and dehumidifies the museum.

The dehumidifiers can treat an impressive 10,000 cubic feet per minute and operate approximately 3,380 hours a year. Because the heating season in Chicago is about 7 months of the year, this function provides value to the museum during the cooling months as well.

Green Business: Get rich, save the world, and party with rock stars

Noelle dEstries — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 02:12:29 +0000

Reuters has a cool story “Eco-millionaires see boom times ahead” where they ask four eco-entrepreneurs two simple questions- ‘how did you get rich’ and “is ‘the business of green’ a bubble?”. It shouldn’t be a surprise that none of them think green business is a bubble- more they saw it as the way that everything will eventually run and as of now a very rich source of business opportunity.

Green business has already made a lot of people rich and will only make more even richer (I’m working on being on that list). The four eco-entrepreneurs interviewed - Bruce Khouri, co-founder of Solar Integrated Technologies; Pedro Moura Cots, co-founder of EcoSecurities; David Scaysbrook, founder of Novera Energy; and Neil Eckert, the CEO of Climate Exchange - share some good bits of wisdom, jump over to the post for the full read, here’s a quick snip of the wind guy (close to my own heart- I have a sizeable piece of equity in my now-ass kicking startup Renewable Choice Energy, the nation’s leading provider of wind credits):

DAVID SCAYSBROOK, founder of Novera Energy, a 43-year old Australian, made 3 million pounds ($6 million) when he cashed in some of his shares in the wind power and landfill gas firm he founded in 1998. He has about 3 million pounds ($6 million) worth of shares invested in Novera and carbon cutter Camco International, which he advises.

Q: How did you get rich?

A: Three things had pushed up share valuations in the wind power industry, he said.

First, people were more worried about energy security and producing energy themselves. Second, the cost of traditional energy sources such as oil and gas had gone up. Third, tax breaks, subsidies and emissions caps had prompted even more conservative investors “to finally move off their perch”.

Q: Is ‘the business of green’ a bubble?

A: “The scale of investment to date is nothing compared to what is coming.

“The bubble aspect is ill-informed investors chasing pipe-dream technology. For example, there are hundreds of firms competing for the next generation of technology in solar panels but it won’t necessarily be the best technology that wins.”

University of New Hampshire piping in landfill gas to cut use of fossil fuels

Noelle dEstries — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 16:33:58 +0000

A big “Go Wildcats!” to the University of New Hampshire, where I attended my freshmen year of college (96/97), for their switch to landfill gas as the campus’s primary energy source. They are building a pipeline from a nearby landfill that will reduce their use of fossil fuels by 85%.

Inside Greentech has the full scoop, here’s a quick bit…

The University of New Hampshire in Durham announced today that the campus will run primarily on gas piped in from Waste Management’s (NYSE: WMI) landfill in Rochester.

Construction is expected to start immediately on the EcoLine gas processing plant.

The University of New Hampshire is the first university in the nation to use landfill gas as its primary energy source.

The landfill gas will replace commercial natural gas as the primary fuel in UNH’s cogeneration plant, enabling UNH to receive 80 to 85 percent of its energy from a renewable source.

“By reducing the university’s dependence on fossil fuels and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, EcoLine is an environmentally and fiscally responsible initiative,” said UNH president Mark Huddleston.