Landfill Gas Power Plants: Making Energy and Protecting the Environment

t the end of our waste steam is the landfill. At the landfill things that can decompose get broken down to their basic molecular building blocks and typically release methane. Methane is 20x the strength of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, so it is also an important gas to consider limiting when discussing Climate Change. Luckily for us (and unfortunately for Kenny), methane is combustible. So by capturing the methane from landfills and directing them to a power plant located on site we can generate electricity and break down methane to carbon dioxide and water vapor* thereby reducing the greenhouse gas potential of the emissions of our landfills. It's a big win for everyone: we make energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and create stronger incentives for waste companies to research and develop strong catalysts and microbes to break down the stuff they have in the landfills to make more methane and to save landfill space. So talk to your city council, find out where your waste goes and encourage them to use recaptured landfill gas to make clean(er) power.

It is important to know that this is different than trash incinerators. Trash incinerators take the raw waste in landfills, burn them and then bury the ashes. The trash is rarely sorted before being put in these incinerators so you have all sorts of crazy plastics and chemicals being burned and releasing who knows what kind of crazy toxic chemical compounds into the air like dioxide. For a good intro to the issues of this, watch Annie Leonard's The Story Of Stuff's part on disposal

*CH₄ + 2O₂ --> C0₂ + 2H₂0