North Carolina county approves LFG-to-RNG project

New Hanover County, North Carolina, has approved a contract with Houston-based Archaea Energy, according to a report from WilmingtonBiz.

The contract will allow the county to dig wells at the New Hanover County Landfill that will collect methane. Archaea will build the necessary infrastructure to harvest and process that methane into renewable natural gas (RNG) for sale to Piedmont Natural Gas, according to county officials.

“This represents probably the pinnacle of my 25-year career in solid waste,” Joe Suleyman, director of the county’s Recycling & Solid Waste Department, told county commissioners during an April 3 meeting. “We’re taking a liability, which is our landfill gas that is composed primarily of methane, and we’re monetizing it—without spending a single penny.”

Suleyman added that this project would not have been possible 10 or 15 years ago when most landfilled waste was inert incinerator ash, which does not generate as much methane as it decomposes. With the closure of the county’s incinerator, and the deposit of large amounts of organic material after Hurricane Florence, the gas potential rose.

RELATED: BP completes acquisition of Archaea Energy | LFG recovery: A road map to success

The new contract will give Archaea Energy two years to construct its facility, complete all testing and run a pipeline from the new facility to the existing Piedmont Natural Gas pipeline.

“All that infrastructure is Archaea’s responsibility; we don’t have to spend a single penny to make this happen,” Suleyman told commissioners. “We don’t have to go to DEQ (the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality); that’s all Archaea’s responsibility.

“And the cherry on top,” Suleyman continued, “Is that once this is complete and we provide them with the landfill gas that meets the criteria—and we believe we can consistently meet that—Archaea will pay New Hanover County $300,000 per year, plus, for the first 10 years of the contract, $3.08 per MMBtu (one million British Thermal Units).”

For the second 10 years, Archaea will pay a percentage of gross revenue.

As reported by WilmingtonBiz, department staff will be involved only in auditing the project’s financial statements. Suleyman said consultants hired by the department to evaluate the project have estimated a potential revenue between $900,000 and $1.2 million annually.