Photo Source: LoCI Controls
In fact, if the nearly 900 feasible candidate municipal solid waste landfills in the US adopted these technologies, it would cut their emissions in half. That would reduce total US methane emissions by 7.2% (49.4 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent) relative to the 2023 level.
In light of the 2021 agreement by international climate scientists that global methane emissions must be cut 30% by 2030 to avoid catastrophic planetary warming, there is a compelling reason for landfills to adopt these economic strategies right away.
At present, many landfill gas capture systems are very inefficient and have large gaps in coverage. They typically don’t include working faces, where decomposing food wastes release methane in the first few years – before those areas are closed and gas capture systems are eventually installed. Furthermore, some high-emitting landfills have no gas capture systems at all.
Energy Vision identified the top three most impactful strategies for capturing more landfill methane, preventing it from escaping into the atmosphere. This methane can then be put to beneficial use, to produce renewable natural gas (RNG) or generate electricity. The strategies include:
- “Real-time tech” – using real-time monitoring and automated wellhead tuning technology to improve the efficiency of existing landfill gas collection systems.
- “Early action” – installing gas collection systems much earlier at landfill working faces (in time to capture the methane-rich biogas from decomposing food waste).
- “New gas capture systems” – building gas collection systems at high-emitting landfills that lack them and which are not required to install them under current lax regulations.
Energy Vision refers to these three options as “advanced landfill tech,” and they are all extremely cost-effective. Based on the advanced landfill tech equipment having an 8-year lifespan, with estimated capital expenses of just $1.3 billion and operating expenses of $250 million annually, the cost comes out to $8.35 per metric ton of CO2 equivalent (MT CO2e) abated. This cost is much lower than many other greenhouse gas reduction strategies (see chart below).
The Lower Annual Cost of Advanced Landfill Tech Per Metric Ton of CO2 Equivalent Abated Compared to Other Climate Strategies
Source: Energy Vision, Leading with Landfills (more details on chart sources available in report).
Energy Vision also calculated that if all food waste were ultimately diverted from landfills, implementing the real-time tech option and new gas capture systems options would still cut 4.1% from total US methane in 2023. This underscores that these advanced landfill tech options are worth implementing even as efforts to divert and redistribute edible food wastes gradually gain momentum.
The business case for adopting advanced landfill tech is very compelling. If virtually all the additional captured gas is converted to RNG and sold as fuel, as the current market incentives strongly favor, then landfills adopting this tech could produce 93 million MMBTU of RNG each year. That would be a roughly 70% increase from the current total national supply (around 135 million MMBTU as of end-2024). Selling this RNG would enable operators to recoup their initial investment within a year of advanced landfill tech equipment coming online, and cumulatively generate gross revenue of $1.86 billion a year thereafter.
There are also many secondary methane mitigation measures worth pursuing at landfills. They include incorporating remote/aerial monitoring of leaks, adopting best practices in cover, and decreasing the spacing between wellheads. In addition, there is almost entirely untapped potential at some industrial landfills, which face no regulatory requirements to install GCCS yet collectively emit almost one fifth of the emissions that MSW landfills do.
Options to accelerate implementation of advanced landfill tech include tighter regulations; direct subsidies; and expanding incentives for beneficial use of gas at landfills implementing best practices for gas capture.
While only a handful of years remain to meet the international goal of cutting methane emissions at least 30% by 2030 (“30×30”), the US can reach this goal by adopting advanced landfill tech, by building 4,700 new anaerobic digesters, and by plugging leaky oil and gas wells (see Energy Vision’s report Meeting the Methane Challenge for more).
Read the full report: Leading with Landfills
