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August 17, 2007, 10:48 AM ET
Running a Campus Off of Garbage
As soon as next year, the University of New Hampshire will get 80 percent to 85 percent of its campus power by burning gas that comes off a landfill 12 miles from its Durham campus.
The university believes it is the first in the nation to use landfill gas as a primary power source. An underground pipeline will be built to transport methane gas from the landfill to the university’s cogeneration plant, where it will replace natural gas. A plant to purify the gas at the landfill also needs to be built.
The university touts the power as renewable and carbon neutral. Those claims are true, with the usual caveats. The kind of power is renewable as long as Americans keep landfilling piles of garbage, and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight to that. As for carbon neutrality, there seem to be benefits to burning landfill methane. Scientists say that methane is a very potent greenhouse gas. Burning it produces water and carbon dioxide, which is still a greenhouse gas, but a less potent one.
The cost of the project will be $45-million.
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