California’s Flawed Landfill Gas Rule Precludes Waste-to-Energy Projects

May 2nd, 2011 by Susan Kraemer

An accidentally regressive 1992 law on the books in California makes it very difficult to tap landfill gas to make energy. Back then the Public Utilities Commission passed a regulation all but prohibiting “injecting California landfill gas into pipelines” according to the Sacramento Bee.

The gas emitted by decomposing matter in landfills can be used to make energy onsite. Just not as much. At Sacramento’s Kiefer Landfill, gas produces 14 megawatts of electricity, enough to light 8,900 homes. Tim Israel, who oversees the Kiefer power plants, told the Sacramento Bee that twice as much electricity could be generated if he could pipe the gas directly to SMUD or some other utility.

The waste is enormous, in a state that counts landfill gases as renewable. One estimate is that 11 GW of potential energy could be had from landfill gas in the state – if it was legal to inject it into pipelines. (California has 74 GW of total energy production from all sources instate.)

California pipelines are not pristine places. Benzene and toluene, both carcinogens, are also permitted in pipelines. Vinyl chloride – the chemical that prompted the law, is also present in digester gases – which are legally allowed to be injected in California pipelines. (The chemical mostly breaks down in the pipeline.)

The issue is not that landfill gases are not allowed in the pipeline. Landfill gases can be sent from another state through California pipelines. But they may not be injected into the pipeline from a landfill within California.

Attempts have been made to change the law. In 2009, the CEC was presented with detailed evidence for the law’s overhaul, and asking that the law be amended to only cover hazardous waste landfills.

Susan Kraemer@Twitter

Landfills Can Free Us from Petrochemicals (cleantechnica.com)
U.S. Military Transforms Landfill Gas into Renewable Energy (cleantechnica.com)

Keep up to date with all the hottest cleantech news by subscribing to our (free) cleantech newsletter, or keep an eye on sector-specific news by getting our (also free) solar energy newsletter, electric vehicle newsletter, or wind energy newsletter.

Tags: California, Energy, landfill gas, Public Utilities Commission

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

Anonymous

I’d like to know more.

Where are the big landfills which could produce significant amounts of usable biogas?

Who are the state legislators in these areas? Whose offices do we contact?

Who, if anyone, is opposing changing the law?

CA is running full speed ahead toward getting off of fossil fuels. It’s hard for me to imagine that this isn’t a law ready to die.
- Susan Kraemer
  
  My understanding is that they are all too small to produce significant amounts on their own – so no one (or several) legislators would be that motivated, and that it is really the law of inertia that is at fault here. Bloom Energy is one company that might have some clout. They have to use gas piped from out of state, it would be much cheaper to use in state gas (esp waste gas like this)
Carl

Composting of biodegradables does away with the need to capture GHGs like methane. as well as the high capital and maintenance costs of collection. It will also make available the valuable nutrients for soil amendments.
- Anonymous
  
  True, but we’ve got these landfills already sitting there, ready to be tapped.
  
  Later we can mine them.
  
  The real solution is to sort (see Tina’s article on robotic sorting) and recycle as much as possible rather than to indiscriminately bury.
  
  Waste Management, a very major player in trash, just purchased Wilmington Organic Recycling Center.
  
  “The WORC is the only permitted in-vessel organics processing center in the Mid-Atlantic region, and processes — unloads, separates, mixes and grinds– 250 to 300 tons per day of organic waste from organic feedstock.
  
  With a capacity of up to 600 tons per day, it’s the largest composting facility in the eastern United States.
  
  The facility’s operations adds more than 200,000 tons to Waste Management’s current 1.7 million ton annual organics processing capacity. It also helps Waste Management expand organics recycling services in the region.”
  
  http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/smart-takes/waste-management-doubles-down-on-organic-recycling-with-composting-investment/16015
  - Susan Kraemer
    
    When are you gonna come on board and write for us, Bob?
    - Anonymous
      
      I like batting clean up rather than lead off…
      
      (I hope that makes sense, I pay little attention to baseball. ;o)
Seamus Dubh

um’ why not just build more on-site power generation instead.
Takes care of the “excess” gas and creates more power for a power strapped state.
- Susan Kraemer
  
  Landfill operators typically do not have access to the kind of capital it takes to build power plants.
  - Seamus Dubh
    
    True enough, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t a feasible solution to a problem of legalities.