City plans to harvest energy from landfill gas

Daniel J. Chacon, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 13, 2007 at midnight

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The city of Denver wants to use landfill gases to generate electricity and then sell it to a utility.

Plans call for the construction of a gas-to-energy plant that would burn methane emitting from the Lowry Landfill and neighboring Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site.

Xcel Energy is poised to buy the electricity, which would serve about 3,000 customers annually.

Texas-based Waste Management, which operates the city-owned landfills, would build the plant under the proposal and share the profits with Denver.

Officials declined to provide financial information about the proposal because negotiations are ongoing, but Denver City Council members are scheduled to discuss it in committee today.

The proposed 3.2-megawatt plant, which would include four combustion engines to produce the electricity, could be the first of its kind in Colorado.

"Not only is (the Lowry Landfill) operating very well in terms of protecting human health and the environment, but now we're even finding a new way to, I guess you could say, make lemonade from lemons," landfill spokesman Drew Kramer said Monday.

Landfill gas now is collected at extraction wells and piped to a burner that destroys methane and its organic compounds.

Construction of the plant is expected to begin this spring and be finished by late summer. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment have to approve the project first, Kramer said.

"We haven't heard that there are going to be any holdups here," he said.

The project would help Xcel comply with Amendment 37, a statewide renewable energy requirement that voters approved in 2004.

Voters "wanted us to look at all renewable resources, not just wind and solar, and this contract with Waste Management will help us meet those requirements," Xcel spokeswoman Ethnie Groves said.

The law requires utilities to get 10 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2015.

Lawmakers intend to introduce a bill this session that would double the requirement to 20 percent.

"There's a big push for renewable sources, and this is yet another form of renewable energy," Kramer said, referring to the proposed plant.

Last month, Pitkin County commissioners decided to study whether methane leaking from the county dump could be used to generate electricity, the Associated Press reported.

Ellen Dumm, a spokeswoman for Denver's Environmental Health Department, said that city employees suspected "many, many years ago" that methane would someday be profitable. She singled out Ed Demos, a former environmental services director.

Demos "was the visionary who was always seeing opportunities for the city and (who was) in the forefront of trying to get them involved in environmental issues," she said. "If Ed Demos were alive today, he'd be really happy."

chacond@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5099

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