EPA LMOP: 542 operating landfill gas projects in the US at 488 landfills (September 2024)

According to the database of the EPA's Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP), as of September 2024, 488 municipal solid waste landfills supplied gas to one or more of 542 operating landfill gas energy projects in the US. The EPA estimates that a further 444 landfills ("candidate landfills") could viably start such a project.

What LMOP measures

LMOP is a voluntary EPA programme that registers landfills and gas utilisation projects. The LMOP database contains information on projects at various stages – planned, under construction, operating and closed – as well as technical data on more than 2,600 municipal solid waste landfills. The data files (as of September 2024) include a detailed and an aggregated list of operating projects and a list of projects under construction or planned, and for landfills reporting under the GHGRP the database refers to their facility identifiers.

RNG projects shown at the webinar

The November LMOP webinar (12 November 2024) presented two recently commissioned projects converting landfill gas to RNG: the Cefe Valenzuela Landfill in Corpus Christi, Texas, and the Steuben County Landfill in Bath, New York State. According to a presentation by Waga Energy, the WAGABOX installation at Steuben County, with a capacity of 1,000 scfm, was started up in Q1 2024, produces 220,000 MMBtu of RNG a year, and the gas grid is 3 miles away.

A note on the numbers

Different listings published by third-party sites give different numbers of projects, because they rely on different definitions (e.g. including inactive projects) and update dates. When citing data one should give the date of the listing and the source; in this text all figures come from the LMOP database as of September 2024.

Why landfill gas matters

Landfills are one of the significant sources of methane emissions in the US, and capturing the gas and using it for energy reduces these emissions. At the same time, RNG from landfills is one of the main sources of renewable gas feeding the cellulosic RIN market (D3), so the condition of this segment depends on the RFS rules.

What this means for Poland and Europe

In Poland, landfills with degassing installations use the gas mainly to produce electricity and heat. The American trend shows that where there is market support for renewable fuels, the importance of upgrading landfill gas to biomethane grows — a path that in the EU is, however, constrained by the falling quantity of landfilled biowaste and the lifetime of the sites.