As California develops rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it must be careful not to regulate landfill-gas power facilities out of existence.
by Peter H. Weiner and Jon Welner
Landfill-gas power facilities are a significant source of renewable energy in California. These facilities operate on a simple principle: as the organic waste in municipal solid-waste landfills decomposes, it generates significant amounts of methane gas. Landfill-gas power facilities harvest this gas and burn it to generate electric power.
Landfill-gas power facilities thus provide a "double benefit." First, the facilities destroy methane gas, which otherwise would be released into the atmosphere or wastefully flared. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas with more than 20 times the warming impact of carbon dioxide. Solid-waste landfills are a major source of methane emissions.
Second, the facilities generate electric power from a resource that would otherwise be squandered. By producing power from waste gas, the facilities generate "clean" electricity that replaces power that would otherwise be provided by facilities that burn fossil fuels and release additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This is the reason that flaring is not a satisfactory regulatory alternative.
There are presently more than 40 landfill-gas power facilities operating in California, with a total capacity of 252 megawatts. Additional landfill-gas projects in California could provide up to an additional 139 megawatts of electricity, according to Black & Veatch.
The proposed "Landfill Methane Capture" regulation
In June 2007, the California Air Resources Board (ARB) issued a list of 37 "early action measures" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions pursuant to the California Global Solutions Act of 2006. Three of these measures were identified as "discrete early action measures" that must be fully effective by Jan. 1, 2010. The list was later expanded to a total of 44 early action measures and nine discrete early action measures.
 |
One of the first discrete early action measures to be adopted was the "Landfill Methane Capture" measure. As described in the final report issued by the ARB in October 2007, the purpose of the Landfill Methane Capture measure was to "set statewide standards for the installation and performance of active gas collection/control systems at uncontrolled municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills. In addition, ARB staff is also proposing to expand the scope of this strategy to include efficiency and emissions control resulting in total reductions on the order of 2 to 4 MMTCO2E [million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent] by 2020."
The ARB has recently posted an updated draft regulation to implement the Landfill Methane Capture measure. These are the key elements of the regulation:
- Gas Collection and Control Systems must be installed at all municipal solid waste landfills, unless the landfill is specifically exempted.
- If the collected gas is to be destroyed by flaring, the "methane destruction efficiency" must be at least 99 percent, except in specified circumstances.
- If the collected gas is to be destroyed in a landfill-gas power facility, the facility must achieve a methane destruction efficiency of 99 percent.
- No location on a landfill's surface may exceed a methane concentration of 200 ppmv (parts per million by volume).
- Landfills must implement extensive new monitoring and recordkeeping requirements.
Avoiding unintended consequences
The proposed Landfill Methane Capture regulation is far-reaching and could significantly reduce methane emissions from municipal solid waste landfills in California. However, unless the new rules are designed with care, they could quickly achieve the unintended result of driving some landfill-gas power generators out of business and chilling the further development of such generation facilities.
For example, as currently written, the draft regulation would require all landfill-gas power facilities to achieve 99 percent methane destruction efficiency. While this might be possible at facilities that use the newer "rich-burn" internal combustion engines, it is not possible to reach these levels of efficiency with the older "lean-burn" engines that are in place in numerous facilities. (Lean-burn engines typically achieve efficiencies above 90 percent, but not 99 percent.) Replacing these older engines would be prohibitively expensive, so implementing the 99 percent rule would effectively force the older facilities to shut down.
Responding to this issue, ARB staff are proposing to "grandfather" the older facilities by imposing a separate standard for lean-burn engines. This might solve the problem, but the key point is that regulators will need to be on the lookout for unintended consequences as they work to develop and implement new greenhouse gas regulations. If regulators had insisted on requiring 99 percent efficiency for all landfill-gas facilities, the few extra percentage points of efficiency would have come at a heavy price?the loss of many megawatts of renewable power.
Other components of the proposed regulation that could raise similar issues are the 200 ppmv standard for landfill surface emissions and the potentially burdensome or duplicative monitoring and reporting requirements. These requirements should be looked at carefully to ensure that the overall result is what is intended?reduced greenhouse gas emissions without the imposition of unnecessary or overly burdensome requirements on facilities that capture methane and produce renewable power.
The proposed Landfill Methane Capture regulation can achieve important reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases. So far, regulators have shown admirable flexibility in developing the regulation so as to ensure that landfill-gas power facilities can continue to operate and generate renewable power from waste methane. It will be important for regulators to remain nimble in order to maximize the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions while minimizing the impact on the generation of renewable power.
Authors
Peter H. Weiner heads the West Coast environmental practice of Paul Hastings, where he represents real estate developers, manufacturers, energy companies and trade associations in federal, state and local environmental, energy and OSHA regulatory matters. Jon Welner is an attorney in the environmental group at Paul Hastings in San Francisco. He represents clients on a wide range of real estate, environmental, and natural resource issues.