Think Energy

thinkenergy shorts: turning the lights on with landfill methane

Apr 14, 2025

Canada creates 36.5 million tons of garbage each year. What if that waste was a reliable source of sustainable electricity? Host Trevor Freeman shares how landfill methane can be converted into renewable energy, helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increasing our energy supply. Learn about the process, the challenges of integrating this technology with existing infrastructure, and how turning waste into power is a positive step toward a more sustainable future. Listen to episode 155 of thinkenergy.

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Transcript:
Trevor Freeman  00:00

Trevor, welcome to a thinkenergy short hosted by me, Trevor Freeman. This is a bite sized episode designed to be a quick summary of a specific topic or idea related to the world of energy. This is meant to round out our collective understanding of the energy sector, and will complement our normal guest interview episodes. Thanks for joining and happy listening. Hi everyone, and welcome back to another thinkenergy short. I'm your host, Trevor Freeman. On the show, we talk about a number of different ways to generate electricity from solar panels to hydroelectricity to nuclear energy and so on. Today we're going to talk about a maybe less familiar method, and that is something that involves our landfills. So, I'm going to leave that as a bit of a teaser until we get to it on what is the tie in between landfills and energy?  So, if you'll permit me for just a minute to stray away from energy, let's talk about garbage. According to the World Bank, over 2 billion tons of waste is produced annually, and that figure is growing. It's projected that globally, we will produce around 3.4 billion tons of waste each year by the year 2050. Now it might surprise you to learn that Canada, where I'm located, is among the highest producers of waste per capita in the entire world. Canada's total waste production is a staggering 36 and a half million tons of waste each year, which, given our population, is nearly one metric ton of waste per person per year, which is pretty astounding. Now, the sheer volume of waste is definitely a problem. We have to do something with that waste. But there's another challenge that comes with landfills, which is where most of that waste ends up, and that problem is methane gas. Methane is one of the most powerful greenhouse gasses out there with 21 times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide. So, that means a given molecule of methane in the atmosphere would trap 21 times the heat that carbon dioxide does. Canada has around 2400 active landfills right now, and they account for about 20% of all methane emissions in the country, so they are a major contributor to climate change. So, what's the tie in with energy? Well, a lot of folks may not think of landfills as a viable clean energy source, especially given what I just said, but there is an innovative technology that can take that methane gas and turn it into renewable electricity.  So, let's dive into it. Let's start by looking at the science. So, inside the landfill, all that stuff that we throw away, all that waste, gets piled up in a giant pile and covered over. So, every day, the landfill gets covered over in order to seal it in. Like any other waste, the organic material in that waste starts to break down. It's kind of eaten by bacteria. Just think of it as a compost pile, like you might see in your backyard, if you do composting in your backyard, the difference here, though, is it's done in an anaerobic environment, so there's no air that cover that gets put on there, and the weight of all that waste and trash together means it's a no or a low air environment. So as that bacteria breaks down the waste, it releases gas as a byproduct. That gas is mostly methane around you know, 50 to 60% of it is methane. There's also some carbon dioxide in there, and a few other things. But the methane is the real problem. As a reminder, it is way more potent at as a global warming gas, as a greenhouse gas, than carbon dioxide. So, in order to turn this into energy, first that gas has to be collected. So, in a landfill, there are collection systems installed to capture that gas, and these are a network of wells and pipes and valves that are placed throughout the landfill intentionally to capture that gas. Those wells are drilled into the landfill at various depths to get at the pockets of gas that are built up through that decomposition process. Once the gas is captured, it's processed. So, it has to be cleaned, if you will, removing impurities such as moisture, hydrogen sulfide, particulate matter, etc. Those all have to be taken out of the gas to sort of purify it. The gas is usually filtered. It's dried to remove contaminants and moisture, and the reason for this is to make it safe to use as an energy source. So how do we take that methane and turn it into energy? Well, it's burned. So, just like any other gas in an internal combustion engine, that methane is burned to turn a turbine in order to generate electricity, sometimes it's used to generate heat, so that heat can be used to heat nearby businesses or industrial processes or anything like that. Sometimes from a landfill, that gas is turned into what's known as renewable natural gas, or you might hear it called RNG, and it has to go through a little bit more purification, and then it can actually be injected into the existing natural gas network to be used by end consumers in their homes and businesses, etc. But if we're looking at just landfill gas to energy. So, there are some units that are located at landfills. It's used to generate electricity, and that electricity is fed back into the grid. So, you may be wondering, well, hang on a second here, we're burning gas, and that creates emissions. So why is this considered a renewable energy source? Well, the reason is because that methane is going to be produced anyway, we can't stop the waste decomposition process from generating methane, and that methane would find its way out of the landfill. It sort of seeps up through that cover, through the cracks, and is released into the air, and as I've said a couple times, methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than even carbon dioxide. So, by burning that methane and using it to generate electricity, it actually lowers the greenhouse gas impact of that methane significantly, and makes it a lot less impactful, and we get electricity out of it, so we get a beneficial byproduct out of that electricity. This process is also helpful for managing the long-term impacts of landfills and extending their useful life by mitigating some of those harmful effects of those emissions, and it also generates economic value for the landfill and makes it more viable, so the systems can generate revenue by selling that electricity or natural gas to end consumers. Landfill gas to energy production currently provides just a relatively small portion of Canada's overall renewable energy supply, so about a half a percent to 1% of total renewable energy generation, but its potential is significant. So, not every landfill out there utilizes this technology, and a lot of them are just releasing that methane gas to the atmosphere. So, more of these systems would generate more electricity, which we need, as we've talked about many times on the show, it would also reduce the amount of methane gas being released to the environment. So, the exact number of landfills with gas to energy plants might fluctuate. Approximately 100 exists today that are in an active state, and this represents a pretty small portion of those 2400 landfills that I mentioned earlier. But that number is growing, and again, it's growing as municipalities and waste management companies recognize the benefits, both environmental and economic, of converting methane to renewable energy. So where I live in Ottawa, there are actually two landfill gas to energy facilities. Those are co-owned by Hydro Ottawa, who I work for, under our Renewable Energy subsidiary, Portage Power. Those two sites, those two landfills to gas energy sites, generate enough energy to power around 10,000 homes annually. So, there's a significant amount of electricity that can be generated from these one of these landfill sites, the primary landfill for Ottawa, was recently in the news about the city's plan to expand and extend its operational lifespan by 15 years. The landfill is currently nearing capacity, but they're going to expand it to allow it to continue operation and the landfill to gas energy plant is a useful tool to mitigate some of the environmental impact of that so to wrap this piece up, by capturing and converting that methane into energy, these plants can mitigate waste and harmful emissions while providing a renewable energy source, increased investment in these systems would not only contribute to more cleaner energy, but also continued mitigation of those harmful impacts, especially of methane being released to the atmosphere.  So, there you have it, a different type of energy generation that we don't talk about often on this show, but hopefully you found that interesting. As always, appreciate you tuning in and look forward to chatting with you next time. Take care. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The thinkenergy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and it would be great if you could leave us a review. It really helps to spread the word. As always, we would love to hear from you, whether it's feedback, comments or an idea for a show or a guest. You can always reach us at [email protected]

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