“Green Projects” are being implemented at breakneck speed. It is hard to keep up with the sheer volume. That’s exciting news for project managers embracing the “green wave”. One particular project caught our attention, not only because it garnered national attention, Parade Magazine, April 18, 2010, but because it is local to Earthpm and my wife is an alum. The University of New Hampshire (UNH), and Waste Management (WM), are powering the college with garbage. Yes, garbage! According to the recent article, Waste Management, the operators of a landfill a dozen or so miles from the campus of 15,000 students, was dealing with surplus gas containing 50% methane. Most landfill operators are forced to burn the gas because it is a pollutant, but can be used as fuel. WM realized that UNH could use methane, but how to get it there was a problem. $49 million dollars and 12.7 miles of pipeline later, UNH has its methane.
We wondered how UNH will pay for the project. The answer is from an article by the EcoLine Partnership. UNH will sell the renewable energy certificates (RECs) generated by using landfill gas to help finance the overall cost of the project and to invest in additional energy efficiency projects on campus. In addition, UNH will sell power in excess of campus needs back to the electric grid. “By selling the RECs from EcoLine™, UNH will further fund its aggressive plan toward climate neutrality,” says Tom Kelly, UNH chief sustainability officer and director of the office of sustainability. “With this climate action plan, called WildCAP, UNH has committed to lowering its emissions by 50 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2080.”
Of course, WM cannot simply tap the landfill and send it down the pipeline. The naturally occurring by-product of landfill decomposition is collected via a state-of-the-art collection system consisting of more than 300 extraction wells and miles of collection pipes. The gas is purified and compressed at a new UNH processing plant at the Waste Management’s Turnkey Recycling and Environmental Enterprise (TREE) in Rochester, N.H. It then travels through a 12.7-mile-pipeline from the landfill to UNH’s cogeneration plant, where it will replace commercial natural gas as the primary fuel source.
Just in these few paragraphs alone, there were three major projects identified; collection of the methane, the pipeline, power generation conversion at UNH. While UNH is the first in the nation to do this, we are sure that more and more universities (and business/municipal complexes) will follow, especially those within close proximity to a landfill. And these days, who isn’t!
