Clean Energy Fuels Acquires Texas Landfill Gas Plant, 3rd Largest in US
18 August 2008
Clean Energy Fuels Corp. has acquired Dallas Clean Energy LLC (DCE), which owns the McCommas Bluff landfill gas processing plant—the third largest landfill gas operation in the United States—for approximately $19.1 million in cash. Clean Energy has partnered in acquiring and operating the project with Cambrian Energy, a landfill gas project development and management company, which owns 30% of DCE.
The landfill, owned by the City of Dallas, opened in 1975 and is scheduled to close in 2042. It is estimated that pipeline quality methane gas will continue to be produced for approximately 30 years after the landfill closes. Atmos Energy Pipeline Company distributes the gas collected from the landfill facility.
Clean Energy entered into a $30 million credit facility with PlainsCapital Bank in Dallas, Texas in order to finance the acquisition and anticipated future capital improvements at the landfill.
This is a major strategic action for Clean Energy, enabling our company to participate in using renewable biogas introduced into the pipeline system for our account along with traditional natural gas. Through developing biogas resources, we hope to create programs that will enable our customers to reduce their carbon emissions, lower their costs and increase the Green value of their operations by fueling natural gas vehicles with renewable biogas. Refuse companies, in particular, are seeking our help in making the connection between the methane gas from their landfills and its use for transportation fuel for their truck fleets.
—Andrew Littlefair, Clean Energy’s President and CEO
Clean Energy is the leading provider of natural gas (CNG and LNG) for transportation in North America.
Landfill gas should certainly be converted to use rather than just flared. Much landfill gas should be avoided in the first place by processing the organic materials into energy or fuels prior to the placement in land fills. It may be that re-openable and re-fillable landfills may be a cheap way of producing methane from organic materials. Concentrating the methane in land fill gases is worth the effort at todays prices. Putting nuclear power-plants at all large landfills will supply cheap energy for gas processing and demonstrate the very small quantities of wastes produced by nuclear power plants. Only twenty tons a year. The fuel quantities could be delivered by UPS trucks. Cheap electricity can then be used to make methanol with the CO2 separated from the methane. ..HG..
Posted by: Henry Gibson | 20 August 2008 at 06:12 PM