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Sacramento County, CA, Powers 8,900 Homes With Landfill Gas
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Municipal landfills
Sacramento County’s Kiefer Landfill Gas-to-Energy Plant captures a potent greenhouse gas—methane—to not only reduce emissions, but turn it into an energy source.
February 2009
The Achievement
Sacramento County’s Kiefer Landfill Gas-to-Energy Plant captures a potent greenhouse gas—methane—to not only reduce emissions, but turn it into an energy source.
Decaying garbage in landfills produces methane gas, while slowly leaches into the air and contributes to global warming. But at the Kiefer Landfill, this gas is captured with 215 extraction devices placed directly in the landfill. The captured gas—which is essential natural gas, a fuel—is used to run five Caterpillar internal combustion engines that turn generators to make electricity for Sacramento-area homes.
The Benefits
- By using landfill gas as a fuel source, the project converts a potential pollutant into a useful product.
- The Sacramento Municipal Utility District purchases the electricity from the generators, which produce 14 megawatts of electrical power, enough capacity to serve more than 8,900 households for over 20 years.
- The amount of gas recovered by this project yields the same reduction in greenhouse gases as removing 117,000 cars from the road for one year, or planting 167,000 acres of trees.
[Source: County of Sacramento Waste Management/Recycling web page]
