Loudoun supervisors have approved a feasibility study on a plan to capture and use waste gas from the county landfill to generate energy.
As organic waste in the landfill decomposes, it emits landfill gas, almost half of which is methane—one of the most harmful greenhouse gases, but also the main component of fuel branded as natural gas. Typically, the Loudoun landfill’s gas is captured and burned off. The county will now study the feasibility of instead collecting and burning it for energy. The study, approved July 18, is estimated to cost $96,000.
Loudoun so far will not be pushing toward any bold new technologies, or even technologies new to the U.S.—the county so far has shied away from some of the responses to a request for information about possible alternative energy projects. During a Board of Supervisors meeting in May, General Services Assistant Director Marc Aveni said of 10 responses to that posting, one offered various technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the county, and four dealt in various forms of hydrogen production.
“While these were all very interesting, they are complex technologies and not necessarily proven in the U.S., so we were a little hesitant to bring these forward to you,” he said.
The majority of responses, seven, dealt with using methane gas generated at the landfill for energy. Without specific information such as how much methane gas the Loudoun landfill generates, several responses estimated a cost of $20 million to $25 million to design and build that system.
The county could also realize some revenues from that project not only through the use of methane gas itself, but through selling greenhouse gas credits through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Renewable Fuel Standard Program. According to a staff report to the board, those are traded “at what is currently a substantial monetary benefit,” and new EPA rules in the program expected later this year “may increase this benefit substantially.” However the market is speculative and county staff advised caution.
They also advised supervisors against trying to pursue that kind of large project in this fiscal year, with the county budget and staff’s schedule already full. That would put the earliest funding available in July 2024.
“Obviously one of the things we have to look at is how much … methane are we actually preventing, versus that amount of cost,” Supervisor Matthew F. Letourneau (R-Dulles) said in May. “The cost-benefit analysis on something like this is really important, because that’s money that could also be spent in other areas of our energy strategy that may net more benefit.”
“The more I look at this, the more I look at the rate at which we are solving the greenhouse gas problem globally, I am more and more convinced that it’s going to take some pretty radical solutions,” Supervisor Michael R. Turner (D-Ashburn) said.
Other large jurisdictions in Northern Virginia have been using landfill gas for decades—according to Loudoun County staff. Fairfax County has been using landfill gas to generate energy since 1984, and Prince William County launched its program in 1996.
Loudoun County will have to do more to reach its own and the world’s climate goals. Using the landfill’s emissions is something contemplated broadly in the county’s energy strategy, but modeling based on that strategy so far shows Loudoun far short of its goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. Meanwhile Dominion Energy’s 2022 Climate Report estimated current government policy and the utility’s plans lead to an estimated 2.1 degrees Celsius increase in global average temperatures, well above the 1.5-degree target of the Paris climate agreement to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change.
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