Landfill hits milestone capturing methane from garbage to produce power

Imagine if you could use the garbage you throw out each week to make energy, powering your home and many others.

That is what Southeast Eco360, the company that manages the landfill for southeast New Brunswick, has been doing since September 2017.

The company reached a milestone recently, producing its 10-millionth kilowatt hour of electricity in December. That is enough to power 700 homes for a year, while reducing emissions by 66,000 tonnes.

"That's like burning 153,000 barrels of oil or charging 8.5 million smartphones," waste diversion co-ordinator Gena Alderson said.

Wells are drilled into the landfill to capture the gas. Southeast Eco360 then pipes methane emitted from decomposing waste into a generator, which burns the methane to create electricity.

"We're taking methane, we're burning it and we're emitting carbon dioxide and getting electricity and energy."

The generator is powered by an engine fuelled by the landfill gas to produce electricity. The electricity the landfill produces is then converted and sold to the NB Power grid.

Alderson said the not-for-profit company has made $1.2 million from those sales, money that goes back into the operating budget to keep overhead costs low.

One of the environmental benefits of making energy from landfill methane is that methane isn't being released into the atmosphere. While carbon dioxide and methane are both greenhouse gases, Alderson said methane is about 25 to 30 times more harmful to the environment.

While the project doesn't extend or shorten the life of a landfill, Alderson said it's good that something is being produced from waste that's sitting there anyway.

Still, Southeast Eco360 has to be careful about what ends up in the landfill, since organic materials like food waste and paper will produce methane as they decompose, but plastic materials won't.