Why controlling landfill methane is key to slowing climate change
The EPA plans to propose rules in 2025 to address methane emissions from landfills, one of the nation’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
Pine Bend Sanitary Landfill, Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota. The largest open landfill in Minnesota.
Michael Silk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
privacy policy The EPA has been quietly preparing a landfill gas crackdown that could be the first major climate regulation of the Kamala Harris administration.
The agency announced plans last week to revise its 2016 landfill discharge standards. The notice was released following a White House announcement. Fact Sheet At the summit last Tuesday Global warming super-pollutantsThe EPA told POLITICO’s E&E News it plans to issue proposed rules in 2025 for new and existing landfills.
Experts say the rule could affect both the climate and the quality of life for people who live and work near municipal waste treatment plants.
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“We feel very strongly that significant savings can be made at very low cost,” said John Coitt, director of U.S. government relations at the think tank RMI.
Methane can trap 80 times as much greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, and landfill gas (a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide along with trace amounts of other pollutants) can contribute to ozone, particulate pollution, and odors.
Solid waste management is the third largest methane-emitting sector in the U.S., after agriculture and oil and gas. Landfills are responsible for more than 17 percent of man-made methane pollution, compared with just under 25 percent for natural gas systems.
These figures are from the E.P.A. Annual Greenhouse Gas InventorySome studies suggest that leakage rates may be underestimated. Published last year Using satellite data from 73 U.S. landfills, the study showed that the median emissions were 77 percent higher than what the industry had reported to the EPA.
Curbing landfill emissions can cost as little as a few dollars per tonne of methane, much less than it would cost to achieve similar reductions in other sectors, Koitt said.
“It’s one of the most cost-effective solutions,” he says, “and some of the companies that we’ve spoken to that manage well-run landfills say they can easily build in these additional costs and disposal fees, so it doesn’t dramatically change the economics of the landfill.”
The EPA told E&E News it’s gathering information about “new and emerging technologies and new approaches” that could be elements of the rule. The goal is to leverage new technologies to “better measure and address emissions and reduce harmful air pollution in frontline communities,” according to a White House fact sheet.
Anne Germain, chief operating officer and director of regulatory affairs for the National Waste & Recycling Association, said the EPA should address industry frustrations about the long wait times for state agencies to approve designs for emissions control systems.
When the EPA last updated its standards in 2016, companies were allowed to install control systems before state approval, but that was at the companies’ own risk, and states could still not approve the plans they put in place.
“So we’re calling for rulemaking that gives the industry some regulatory certainty,” said Germain, of the group that represents private waste management companies, “but right now we don’t see that happening.”
Technological advances
Those tracking the rule expect the EPA to release a white paper on control technologies and solicit comments on it, which could happen later this year.
But the EPA is already falling behind.
Section 111 of the Clean Air Act directs the agency to review the rules every eight years, and the landfill discharge standards expire next month. Environmental groups say the Biden administration has its hands full with rulemaking on everything from power plants to oil and gas development.
Landfill gas has been regulated under the Clean Air Act since the 1990s. Revised standards during the Obama administration “weren’t as ambitious,” said Edwin LaMere, an attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. The Trump administration refused to enforce the standards, and facilities in some states didn’t meet them until very recently.
EDF, the Clean Air Task Force and other groups petitioned the EPA last year to reconsider and strengthen the rule.
“We’ve been urging them to put a timeline in place and start working on the rules, and they’re doing that now,” Ramare said. “We’re really pleased to see that and we’re going to continue to make recommendations and hope that they can stick to the timeline that they announced.”
Proponents argue that advances in methane monitoring since the rules were last revised will provide a fuller picture of landfill emissions and make leaks easier to find and repair.
“There’s been a really dramatic advancement in our overall ability to measure methane emissions,” said Riley Duren, CEO of the nonprofit CarbonMapper. “We can now not only measure emissions from landfills, but pinpoint exactly where on the surface of the landfill they’re coming from.”
“Modern landfills are complex engineered systems,” he says, “and being able to understand what’s going on in that complex landscape is critical to understanding how to manage landfill gas and methane emissions.”
Environmentalists want the EPA to step up monitoring requirements and require more and smaller landfills to install the collection systems needed to flare the gas.
But German, of the National Waste & Recycling Association, hopes the rules won’t be too strict.
“Our thinking is that if we are going to lower the levels and go after smaller landfills, we have to be prepared to have some flexibility,” she said.
“So far, what we’re seeing from what people are watching is the opposite,” she continued. “They’re trying to get us to do smaller facilities, take away flexibility, and basically make it nearly impossible to follow the rules.”
Reprinted from E&E News Posted with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News delivers news that matters to energy and environmental professionals.
