Another Perspective on Landfill Gas and Carbon Capture

This op-ed was written in response to a series of articles we’ve published on the H.W. Hill Landfill Gas Project in Roosevelt, Wash.

Carbon Capture and Sequestration technologies are already being implemented by industries around the world, including at this oil refinery in Alberta. Photo courtesy of Pexels

By Ryan Rittenhouse. Oct. 31, 2019. How we transition to a clean and renewable energy future can sometimes be a complicated and nuanced issue. This is never truer than when talking about proposed energy solutions on the fringe of our economy and industries, such as with landfill gas and carbon capture technologies.

Any conversation around these topics should never confuse certain things. Chief among those is that burning any kind of biomatter for energy is almost never going to be truly “renewable.” True renewable energy sources are things like wind, solar, geothermal, etc. – energy sources that will never run out and which are part of a sustainable production process from start to finish. Landfills, to the contrary, are something we should reduce in general. The ultimate goal of waste management should be a zero-waste economy, where all waste products are reused or recycled, or else completely biodegradable from a sustainable and renewable feedstock. That means landfill gas is inherently unsustainable in the long run, since landfills themselves are inherently unsustainable. 

While certainly a far better source of methane than fossil fuels, landfill gas still involves the burning of fuel to create power. If landfill gas is used to replace fossil fuel-based methane (so-called “natural gas” in power plants, for example) that is certainly not a bad thing, as it slightly reduces demand and reliance upon fossil fuels. But if it is used in conjunction with fossil fuel methane, that is completely unsustainable and will only result in perpetuating the fossil fuel industry. Either way, landfill gas still creates carbon dioxide emissions and we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions anywhere possible.

The world is nowhere near slowing, much less stopping, our emissions of greenhouse gases (namely carbon dioxide and methane). Reducing and eliminating our emissions is the first priority, sequestering carbon dioxide to reduce atmospheric concentrations would be the next, and there is no reason why we can’t start sequestering right away. Everything viable that significantly lessens the impacts of global warming should be pursued immediately.

Historically, the fossil fuel industry has only expressed any interest in one form of carbon capture – separating carbon dioxide from flue gas and pumping it underground (sequestering) into deep caverns under high pressure. This is usually referred to as Carbon Capture and Sequestration or CCS. This process is problematic for many reasons, not the least of which is that there is no guarantee the carbon dioxide won’t leak back out suddenly or gradually over time. A far better method of carbon capture is to turn it into a solid (such as calcium carbonate or bicarbonate) and bury it, or use it as a commodity itself. The earth does this naturally in the oceans, but that process is extremely slow – taking place over geologic eons. In order to use this as a viable carbon storage process that would have any hope of matching our emissions, we would need to do it ourselves on a grand scale. 

Technologies already exist to convert methane (CH4) into pure hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Converting that carbon dioxide into mineral carbonates is much more difficult and expensive, and the energy industry isn’t investing much time or effort into making it a reality. This would be ideal, however, as when you burn hydrogen the only byproduct is water vapor (H2O). Economic costs are the only thing holding this back, but if industries want to keep using methane they should have to capture any carbon dioxide emissions and turn them into mineral carbonates. 

Researchers at Newcastle University discovered a process years ago by which they could convert carbon dioxide into mineral carbonates using nickel as a catalyst, which makes the process much more economical and efficient, but it still has yet to attract any real attention in the media, political circles, or the energy industry. Climate change is already having extreme economic impacts around the world, and that impact is only going to get more severe as time goes on. Any economic “costs” associated with carbon capture technologies are overwhelmingly dwarfed by the cost of doing nothing in the face of increasingly severe climate change. Unfortunately, our economy is not designed in a way that adequately accounts for such tradeoffs. 

The only solution to climate change is to replace all fossil fuel energy use with non-fossil sources, and there is no reason all those sources cannot be truly sustainable and renewable technologies since there are so many to choose from. Landfill gas is a possible part of the transition and it makes sense to utilize it as long as we still have landfills, but it is not inherently sustainable and the use of such methane for energy should not disrupt attempts to move toward zero-waste and away from landfills as waste management. 

Landfill gas could never replace fossil fuel methane use in the energy sector anyway. Methane emissions from the natural gas industry alone (leaks, etc.) are about the same as all the methane from all the landfills in the US combined (a little over 7 million metric tons according to the Energy Information Administration). This is a tiny fraction of actual methane use by the natural gas industry in power plants, etc. which consumes over 27 trillion cubic feet every year (and if my math is correct, that’s less than one percent).

To have a significant impact on global warming, you’d need to be capturing emissions (namely CO2) from fossil fuel burning, and landfill gas doesn’t do this. All it does is speed up the process of turning methane into CO2 by burning it instead of allowing it to slowly break down naturally in the atmosphere.

Ultimately, we should just stop burning things to make power. A future dedicated to a fully renewable and sustainable society doesn’t involve landfills or methane of any kind. Our real energy solutions lie elsewhere.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Ryan Rittenhouse has a degree in Communications from Allegheny College in Pennsylvania. His career in environmental organizing and activism began with Ohio Citizen Action, and he spent a year at sea volunteering with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Before moving to Oregon, Ryan worked as an environmental organizer for Public Citizen and Greenpeace in Austin, Texas. His work in the Pacific Northwest has focused on opposing fossil fuel terminals and transport, and the preservation of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.