Renewable Natural Gas project continues forward in Springfield - KOLR - OzarksFirst.com
Renewable Natural Gas project continues forward in Springfield
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — At a Springfield City Council workshop on June 4, an update was provided on the city’s Environmental Services Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) project.
According to a press release from the City of Springfield, the project proposes to convert biogas generated at Noble Hill Sanitary Landfill and Southwest Wastewater Treatment Plant into renewable natural gas and deliver the renewable energy source to the grid of natural gas pipelines.
“There’s other organic matter that gets deposited in our landfill and in each case, it’s that decays that produces this gas,” Ron Petering said. “We collect that gas that we can’t just released into the atmosphere. It’s not great for the atmosphere, so we have to do something with it. It helps us create the highest and best use of this gas, [which] is a byproduct of the landfill operations and the treatment plant operations that we operate on behalf of the community.”
The press release states that the initial capital needed for construction at the landfill and Southwest Treatment Plant is estimated at $31.6 million, with an additional $3 million needed for annual operations and maintenance costs.
Petering says the facilities could turn a profit for the city, allowing them to sell the captured natural gas to other utility companies.
“That revenue would come back to support the operations of the utility, both at the landfill and with the sewer services that we provide,” Petering said.
The city says that a number of financial incentives and grant opportunities are being pursued for the project.
The project is anticipated to begin in the fall of 2024, with a goal of bringing RNG capability online in the fall of 2025.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: renewables
Renewable energy sources — once the fuel of the future, then practical in specific, narrow applications — are increasingly economic mainstream sources of power generation. Hydropower was long the mainstay of U.S. renewable electricity generation, although wind power surpassed hydro for the first time in 2019, and solar continues its rapid growth. The continued growth of wind and solar, with their fluctuations, is tied in part to improvements in storage technology: batteries.