UNH Launches Landfill Gas-to-Energy Project

At a May 2009 ceremony it billed as “the most sustainable commencement in [its] history,” the University of New Hampshire (UNH) announced the launch of EcoLine, a landfill gas-to-energy project. The project is expected to meet up to 85% of the 5 million ft2 (464,515 m2) campus’ electricity and heating needs, making UNH the only university in the U.S. to use purified landfill gas as its primary fuel source.

Two years in construction and four years in the making, the EcoLine project is a partnership between UNH and Waste Management’s Turnkey solid waste facility in nearby Rochester, New Hampshire, which manages over half of the state’s trash. The facility had long used the gas to power its own operations and about 9,000 homes in the area, but excess gas was still being burned off, adding pollutants to the atmosphere and contributing to climate change.

At a May 2009 ceremony it billed as “the most sustainable commencement in [its] history,” the University of New Hampshire (UNH) announced the launch of EcoLine, a landfill gas-to-energy project. The project is expected to meet up to 85% of the 5 million ft² (464,515 m²) campus’ electricity and heating needs, making UNH the only university in the U.S. to use purified landfill gas as its primary fuel source.

Two years in construction and four years in the making, the EcoLine project is a partnership between UNH and Waste Management’s Turnkey solid waste facility in nearby Rochester, New Hampshire, which manages over half of the state’s trash. The facility had long used the gas to power its own operations and about 9,000 homes in the area, but excess gas was still being burned off, adding pollutants to the atmosphere and contributing to climate change.

To capitalize on the available resource, UNH constructed a gas purification facility at the landfill on a site leased from Waste Management. Three hundred 36" (91 cm) wells reach down into the trash layer, where decomposition produces gas, primarily methane. The gas is pumped out and piped to the purification facility, where first sulfur compounds and then carbon dioxide are removed in order to “clean” the gas and raise the volumetric content of methane relative to other gases. (The extracted carbon dioxide is currently being released into the atmosphere, diminishing the environmental benefit of the project, but UNH and Waste Management are exploring methods for sequestering and recycling the greenhouse gas, according to a report by a local news agency.) The purified gas is then compressed and sent through a 12.7-mile (20.4 km) pipeline to the Durham, New Hampshire, campus, where it replaces natural gas as the primary fuel for an on-campus cogeneration plant that provides both heat and power to campus buildings. Built at a cost of $28 million with an estimated 20-year payback, the cogeneration plant went online in 2006 and is a signature feature of the university’s WildCAP initiative to combat climate change. Through the program, UNH aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2020, 80% by 2050, and 100% by 2100.

The EcoLine project cost UNH roughly $49 million to build, and was financed through traditional borrowing. The university expects to recover its costs within 10 years—a payback period that it will expedite through the sale of renewable energy credits (RECs) through 2012. The project will also stabilize the university’s fuel expenses by reducing its dependence on volatile fossil fuel markets. UNH and Waste Management officials estimate that the landfill gas supply would last 20–30 years even if Turnkey were shut down immediately, and there are no plans to close the facility any time soon.

– Andrea Ward

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EcoLine