Carbon Harvest Energy develops turnkey projects that convert landfill gas into heat and electrical power. Carbon Harvest tailors each project to best meet the needs of the client, which is typically a landfill owner. On most projects, Carbon Harvest will contract with the landfill to install a gas collection system, if one is not already in place, and convey the collected landfill gas to a combined heat and power plant (CHP Plant) and back-up flare. The electricity generated by the CHP Plant that is not used by other components of the project is either sold to a large local power consumer or to the local electrical utility.
Carbon Harvest will design, permit, finance, construct and operate both the gas collection system and the CHP plant. It also will work with the electric utility to develop a grid interconnect agreement and negotiate with power purchasers to secure a power purchase agreement. All of this is done by partnering with a team of specialists that are acknowledged leaders in their field such as Sanborn Head and Associates for landfill gas collection systems and SCS Energy for the design and operation of CHP Plants.
While ownership arrangements can vary by project, the most common arrangement is for Carbon Harvest to enter into a Gas Purchase and Property Lease Agreement with the landfill owner whereby it pays the owner for the gas delivered to a CHP Plant owned by Carbon Harvest and located on land leased from the landfill. Once the Agreements are in place, there typically is no further expense incurred by the landfill as all capital financing is supplied by Carbon Harvest.
Conventional landfill power plants are less than 40% efficient. That means that over 60% of the energy contained in landfill gas is usually wasted as heat. By incorporating heat recovery systems into our energy plants, much of this waste heat can be captured and beneficially used to either heat nearby greenhouses or piped offsite to industrial processes thereby displacing fossil fuels that they would otherwise purchase and consume. By recovering and utilizing this waste heat, the efficiency of our energy facilities is increased to over 80%.
Landfill gas typically contains approximately 50% methane, a greenhouse gas pollutant that is 23 times as potent as carbon dioxide. As the landfill gas is consumed to generate power, the methane is destroyed thereby providing significant reductions in the landfill’s greenhouse gas emissions. The electricity produced by the CHP Plant displaces electricity that would otherwise have been produced, often through the combustion of a fossil fuel such as natural gas, also reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, the recovered heat that is beneficially used in a greenhouse or industrial process further reduces fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.