The EPA announced $4.6 million in grant funding to five institutions for research to quantify and mitigate emissions from municipal solid waste landfills. Across the world, communities generate residential, commercial, and industrial waste that goes to municipal landfills, which generate gas as the waste degrades. About half of landfill gas emissions are methane, which contribute significantly to climate change. Landfills also emit other gases that can adversely affect human health and the environment. Due to the significant health and climate impacts of these emissions, EPA is committed to developing and identifying better technologies for measuring and mitigating them.
“Methane is a potent climate pollutant, which is why improving our understanding of the impacts of methane and other pollution from landfills is crucial to our efforts to address climate change,” said Chris Frey, Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Research and Development. “EPA is investing in landfill emissions research to improve the scientific foundation for decisions to protect people and the planet. Results from this research will have a global impact on informing approaches to reduce methane emissions and more sustainably manage landfills.”
Historically, there has been a limited ability to understand and quantify landfill gas emissions. These include hazardous air pollutants like benzene, odor nuisance compounds like hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and contaminants of emerging concern like per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). While EPA has developed several landfill emissions estimation tools for public use, lack of quantitative data relating to landfills, how they are managed, and environmental conditions that affect their emissions has limited the accuracy of these tools.
The projects announced today will help advance methods for monitoring and quantifying landfill emissions of methane and other pollutants, evaluate strategies for reducing these emissions, and improve understanding of how municipal solid waste landfill emissions may change due to future climatic conditions, including extreme weather events. Grantees will use a variety of sensing techniques and modeling approaches to compare current landfill technologies and provide a basis for the future of landfill emission mitigation and management.
The following institutions are receiving awards:
- University of Delaware (Newark, Del.) to quantify errors in measurement technologies, guide future technology application (e.g., optimal sensor placement), evaluate landfill management practices, and more accurately model and predict landfill emissions.
- University of Miami (Miami) to improve and demonstrate the use of lower-cost air quality sensors to map pollution distribution, estimate emission fluxes, and evaluate strategies to reduce methane emissions.
- University of Wisconsin (Madison, Wis.) to demonstrate and standardize modeling and mapping methods for quantifying emissions of methane and other health impacting gases released from landfills.
- University of Colorado, Boulder (Boulder, Colo.) to assess the performance and feasibility tradeoffs of integrating measurements across platforms to assess emissions and mitigation of methane and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from landfills.
- University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, Calif.) to develop and demonstrate an innovative approach to more cost effectively monitor and quantify emissions and to quantify the benefits from a range of mitigation and landfill management methodologies.