Turning Landfill Gas into Energy

Methane is a true “natural gas,” produced as a by-product in the breakdown of organic matter. If you’ve ever read a newspaper headline about grazing cows being an environmental threat and contributing to global warming worries – it’s because cows are huge producers of methane gas. OK, enough said on that. But another large producer of methane gas is the nation’s thousands of municipal waste landfills.

For years, landfill operators “flared off” the methane gas – burned it – as a waste byproduct of the landfill operation. But more recently, those same landfill managers have realized they have what amounts to a renewable energy resource – methane gas – and have worked to develop markets for their alternative fuel. In tonight’s story, a landfill in Houston has become an alternative fuel source for powering Anheuser-Busch’s brewery operations in that city and a similar brewery operation in Fairfield, California.

Nightly Business Report