Mar 11 2010

LNG in Livermore?

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Livermore, once a sleepy cow town, is today celebrated for the world-class science at its national laboratory, its thriving wine industry and . . . its record-breaking liquefied natural gas plant.

LNG in Livermore?

Yes. You won’t see any drilling rigs out in the pastures, but at Altamont Landfill, whopping amounts of methane gas are belched out by bacteria that break down organic waste. Instead of venting into the atmosphere, however, the gas is now captured by dozens of black suction tubes spread across the facility. 

Last November, Houston-based Waste Management Inc., which runs the 240-acre landfill, and Linde North America, a major engineering company, announced they had started production at the world’s largest facility to convert landfill gas to LNG.

In full production, the plant can produce up to 13,000 gallons of the super-cold methane each day. The liquid fuels 300 clean-air vehicles in Waste Management’s hauling and recyling fleet and will reduce CO2 emissions by nearly 30,000 tons a year.

The use of LNG cuts carbon emissions 85 percent compared to gasoline or diesel fuel, according to Waste Management. The company has nearly 500 vehicles powered by LNG or compressed natural gas in about 20 California communities. 

(PG&E also runs some of its heavy trucks on LNG, which fuel up at the Fremont Service Center.  Of late, however, the utility is focusing on expanding its fleet of electric-powered trucks.)

In January, EPA awarded the Altamont Landfill one of its 2009 Project of Year awards and the facility has been hailed by leaders of the California Energy Commission and other state agencies, several of which contributed financially to the project.

“It’s taking material that would otherwise go into the atmosphere and be a contributor to global warming and turning it into a useful product that is cutting emissions,” said Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board. “This is exactly the kind of win-win situation we are looking for in trying to transform our whole energy economy away from having to extract, process, and import fuels from other parts of the world.”

Waste Management is aggressively mining its landfills for more green energy. The company runs 115 gas-to-energy facilities at its landfills and 16 solid waste-to-energy combustion generators. In all, they produce enough power for 700,000 homes.

The company’s newest investment horizon is waste-to-biofuels production, including investments in Enerkem to make ethanol and a partnership with Terrabon and Valero Energy to make “green gasoline.”

EPA recently reported that 519 landfill gas-to-energy projects were operating across the country last year, up more than 25 percent since 2005. NEXT100 profiled one such project in Half Moon Bay in December.

Converting waste methane gas to biofuel isn’t just good business. It’s especially good for the environment since methane that escapes into the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. If Congress ever gets around to putting a price on carbon emissions, we’ll surely see many more companies drilling for landfill gas.

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