RNG plant planned for landfill in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota

A new renewable natural gas (RNG) plant has been approved to be built at the Pine Bend Sanitary Landfill in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota.

The plant, which will be the first of its kind in the state, will be built and run by Fortistar, a White Plains, New York-based investment firm that provides capital to build and manage companies that create green energy sources. It will be one of about 70 such facilities nationwide, reports the Star Tribune.

Phoenix-based Republic Services, which owns the Pine Bend landfill, will lease Fortistar the land for the 12,000-square foot facility. The RNG plant is expected to be operational by March 2022.

"This technology is new to Minnesota, but not to the rest of the country," Aaron Janusz, environmental manager for Republic Services, told the Star Tribune. "These types of facilities have been in operation for several years."

The plant is expected to treat biogas collected from the landfill and send it into the Xcel Energy pipeline. It will then be used to fuel a fleet of trucks at Pine Bend that run on compressed natural gas, a Fortistar spokesman said.

Jonathan Maurer, managing director at Fortistar, said the company has built five such facilities, and has three more in the works in Ohio, Florida and now Inver Grove Heights, and helped improve the technology behind it. "This is a tried-and-true process," he said.

The new facility, which will cost an estimated $40 million to build, will replace another Fortistar facility at Pine Bend that turned methane into electricity but closed several years ago. That plant was inefficient and too costly to run, Maurer said.

Pine Bend landfill is currently the largest open landfill in Minnesota and encompasses 255 acres in the southeast metro. The plant will be situated on the western 100 acres of the landfill property. The previous facility was in the property's northwest corner.

Currently, landfill gas produced at Pine Bend is being burned off as a flare, said Janusz, adding that he's excited to put it to use as renewable natural gas.

Inver Grove Heights city officials have said previously that they believe the facility will have environmental benefits and be good for the city.

"We're beginning to make a significant dent in the carbon impact that the transportation industry has," Maurer said.