Crazy About Methane
Alright, so my new job is about landfill and our favorite greenhouse gases: methane.
You know, CH4?
To find out how deadly is your trash and practical things society can do — read on below.
Why is Methane a Baddie
Once methane reaches the atmosphere, its average atmospheric lifetime is about a decade (~12 years). Reaction with hydroxyl radical (OH) ultimately turn methane into CO2 and water.
Despite its short life, in most greenhouse gases reporting protocol, the global warming potential (GWP) of methane is reported as GWP-100 (the trailing number 100 stands for 100 years span), dimmering its rapid climate worsening potential.
In hallmark places like New York City, even using GWP-20 for methane was recently repealed to “stay consistent” with global reporting. In short, when using the muted GWP-100 metrics, methane is about ~27 times worst than carbon dioxide whereas GWP-20 metrics indicate at least 80 times worst. In most climate action plans and GHG reporting, you’ll see the 27 number more often.
What this consequentially leads to is that:
- Natural gas just look cleaner on paper
- Methane gets discounted by about 2/3
- More “progress” are made on paper
- Near term warming is muted to doesn’t matter
Research shows that every extra fraction of a degree brings more heat waves, droughts, coral reef die-off, and a higher risk of hard-to-reverse changes like melting ice sheets. Cutting methane is the fastest way to slow warming over the next few decades. Methane traps a lot of heat but only lasts about a decade in the air, so reducing it pays off quickly. Impacts you and I can see in our life time.
If you need to remember anything, just know this — methane is a very important greenhouse gas with a substantial (80x) equal-mass pulse of carbon dioxide. We are running out of time. We can see the climate change impacts when we reduce methane in our lifetime.
Renewable Natural Gas for Good
Based on a California Energy Commission consultant report on Renewable Natural Gas (RNG), Californians use around ~12,500 MM therms in 2020 and forecasted 2030 usage to be 13,274 MM therms. RNG potentially have the production of 1000~6000 MM therms (10% to almost 50%), with sources from solid wastes, agriculture (livestock waste), wastewater treatment plant, or other).
My primary interest highlights that RNG from landfills have the potential to displace 6 to 15% of the non-power-plant natural gas consumption in California.
I know my decarbonization friends may think natural gas is going away, but it’s not going to happen very soon. CPUC estimates that across the 3 major IOUs had about $27 billion of gas infrastructure investment that had not been yet recovered from customers through depreciation.
Yeah, natural gas distribution networks aren’t going to disappear overnight.
Plus, with reliability is a foundation to climate resiliency, it’s not enough to be efficient and renewable. We need energy resources that can be distributed like a battery.
A giant battery to lower the duck curve peak demand? Guess what? Landfill gas kind of works like one.
The current Long-Term Gas Planning Rulemaking (R.24–09–012) states CPUC is examining both gas-system decarbonization and opportunities for decommissioning gas infrastructure as gas demand declines. SB1440 authorized CPUC to adopt biomethane procurement targets or goals for gas utilities to displace some fossil fuel natural gas.
In the similar spirit, CARB’s 2022 Scoping Plan explicitly retains a role for low-carbon gaseous fuels. Its modeled pathway includes biomethane blended into pipelines in the 2030s and renewable hydrogen blended into the fossil-gas system, while dedicated hydrogen pipelines serve some industrial clusters. CARB describes renewable natural gas and hydrogen as options during the transition away from fossil fuels.
Let’s Talk Affordability
Some ways of cutting emissions actually save money, while others cost more up front.
Fixing gas leaks and capturing gas from landfills is relatively cheap. The saved gas can even be sold, and households don’t have to change anything. Making homes more efficient, like better insulation, also lowers energy bills. The expensive part is replacing gas furnaces, cars and power plants with cleaner options, which means big upfront costs that often show up on top of increasing utility bills while you’re already trying to use less.
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Carbon pricing programs also raise fuel prices, though they can give money back to households. The political problem is timing. The costs hit your bill now, while the benefits come later and are harder to see: fewer wildfires and floods, lower insurance premiums, cleaner air and less illness.
Waiting has its own costs too, because climate damage and volatile fossil fuel prices already raise what people pay. The smartest approach usually starts with the cheap, fast fixes like methane leaks, protects lower-income families during the switch, and sets realistic timelines so costs don’t spike all at once.
That’s the urgency behind maximizing renewable natural gas, but ask anyone on the street this or even an energy specialist at a bar, no one would even know how much their own community’s landfills could have been saving them money.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing to decarbonize.
We enjoy the reliability of gas system when our electric grid goes down. That mean many Californians and I can boil water for my family during a catastrophe. That is survival for some families.
Look, I’m not defending the fossil fuel industry. The fact is California has one of the most extensive natural gas distribution networks in the United States, representing a significant investment in existing energy infrastructure.
So Where Are We At, California?
Data analyst at heart, so I sought to understand how much methane are we getting from landfill and why are most landfills in California burning off methane rather than to capture it?
Based on Cal Recycle SWIS Database, there are about 378 landfills. Around 139 are active landfills — meaning waste is still being buried and while the other are closed (still generating landfill gas, but no longer accepting new waste). Half of the waste management operators are private companies like Republic Services, Edco, and etc.
Out of all the landfills in California, about 78 shows up in the voluntary EPA’s LMOP Database with more in-depth data. These are the ones that have some kind of energy recovery system.
That graph is showing most landfills in California still burns off methane than capturing them for energy recovery. The biogas market is likely struggling against strict air compliance standards and overcoming first cost capital. However, if you look at the stock prices for many of the waste companies in the past 10 years, they’re going up.
Investing in trash management a decade ago put you at a better place compared to the S&P500 — imagine that!
From the CPUC Renewable Gas proceeding, the agency proposed to reduce the procurement target in roughly half due to cost containment concern, environmental integrity, and realistic procurement.
In other words, things are still moving slow, even on the demand side.
Public funding for a public agency to establish LFG to Energy is barely there, if at all. So, it’s a niche industry run by lawyers and bureaucracy — not technologists. There are some challenges with navigating California’s complex network of environmental regulation compliance because landfills gas all starts out as — frankly— dirty. Not to mention the NIMBY-ism is still alive and strong in this sunshine state. So, currently, maybe we are at the mercy of private equity and lawyers.
Perhaps it should stay that way.
Don’t come at me; I’m still forming my opinion on that because there can be more financial structure and incentives already in place to overcome the high capital cost investment and compliance barriers.
Except the private equity and lawyers would probably point fingers at the regulators. I can see both sides. It’s no small task to hold hands and move forward with a consensus.
What’s Next?
The planners out there know about SB1383 and how California aims toward zero waste by diverting all organics to compost. After all, plastics doesn’t really produce methane gas (unless you have a special plastic-fast-eating bacteria). How does that that affect renewable natural gas production?
Good point — all the policies are aiming toward a circular economy and zero waste ideally. In theory, eventually, our landfills will just be composed of un-recyclable plastics, and my job won’t exist by then. As long as there are cellulose (think paper, wood), there will be natural bacteria that eats them and produce methane.
Heck, if the whole country goes vegan and there’s no animal farms to produce agricultural waste — I’ll be happy to be out of a job and transfer my skills elsewhere.
Meanwhile, there’s still plenty of trash around. It’s not just a dump and forget anymore. We know our resources are finite, so why not make use of the stuff we have and buy some time for our children?
I’m still on my learning journey in the world of solid waste. This was the first step to understand the broad overview of current policy trends and what-are-other-people-doing kind of thing. I felt like I barely scratched the surface.
Stay tune for the next episode.
