Turning trash into electricity: methane power: municipal landfill creates energy for military, utility jobs, and income.

• Author: Joehnk, Jessa S.
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Environmental Services

Two years ago the Municipality of Anchorage was spending $60,000 annually to take care of a problem that every city deals with--methane gas seeping out of the landfill. It bleeds off as the garbage naturally decomposes. The landfill off Hiland Road was only meeting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations of methane by burning off the excess. The only thing being created was a hot-air lift where ravens played in the winter; Anchorage was spending money on a problem that wouldn't simply disappear.

Methane is one of the big greenhouse gases monitored closely because it captures more than twenty times the radiation that carbon dioxide captures. According to the EPA, methane gas created by landfills accounts for about 18 percent of global methane emissions.

Doyon's Proposal

Anchorage realized that, even though the city was spending money to destroy the methane, it wasn't going to see an end to the financial drain or environmental burden. The Municipality sent out a Request for Proposal in March 2010 asking for someone to use the landfill gas beneficially. Doyon Utilities submitted a proposal within two months, which became the system now in place. The utility company would build the infrastructure to capture and process the methane into natural gas, generate power from the gas, and distribute the power to the nearby military base. Doyon's plan would bridge the connection between Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER) and the Municipality of Anchorage for the benefit of all involved.

JBER had its own mandate with which to comply. Specifically, Section 203 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 ordered that by 2013 the base needed at least 7.5 percent of its energy to come from a renewable resource, provided the program was economically feasible and the technology in existence. In fact, the policy specifically cites municipal solid waste as a potential renewable energy to harness. Even beyond the mandates, there was the potential for the Department of Defense to save money powering JBER by using renewable energy. The proposal estimated that there could be approximately $73 million in savings for the base over the fifty-year life of the contract.

So in 2011, the contract was awarded by the Municipality and the Department of Defense; a short two months later, ground was broken and construction started. Fifty-seven collection wells were built throughout the 165-acre Anchorage landfill. A vacuum system pulls the methane into a processing system...