UPDATE 1-Waste Management taps clean power from garbage
(Adds details on WM's current landfill gas use, Fujifilm project)
NEW YORK, June 27 (Reuters) - Waste Management Inc. WMI.N said on Wednesday it will speed up its tapping of gas from rotting garbage to generate clean power from 60 landfills over five years.
The company, the country's largest landfill operator, will spend $400 million to bring turbines to the dumps, boosting its power generation from such projects to to 700 megawatts of power a year, or enough power for about 700,000 homes, the company said.
Waste Management will earn renewable energy credits it can bank or sell for its projects in states that have such programs.
Alternative energy sources are growing in the United States amid high oil and natural gas prices and as the U.S. Congress debates bills that would put limits on greenhouse gases.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says about 425 U.S. landfills tap gas for power and an additional 560 dumps hold promising supplies of the fuel.
Waste Management said landfills are more dependable than other sources of alternative energy.
"Unlike wind power, which doesn't always blow, or solar which doesn't always shine, landfills produce gas constantly," Paul Pabor, Waste Management's vice president of renewable energy, said in an interview.
Separately on Wednesday, Fujifilm FUGI.O said it would use landfill gas to power 40 percent of its manufacturing complex in South Carolina while cutting heat-trapping gases 10 percent.
Rotting garbage produces a gas that is about half methane, which has about 20 times the heat-trapping potential of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Most landfills simply vent the gas to the atmosphere and those dumps are the largest source of human-related methane emissions in the country, according to the EPA.
Pabor said landfills are often placed near urban areas which makes it more convenient than some other alternative sources of power, like wind turbine farms, which can sometimes be placed far from customers.
Waste Management first generated power from garbage in the United States more than 20 years ago and about 100 of its 281 landfills tap the gas.
