In theory, landfill gas-to-energy should be one of the easiest pitches in renewable energy. Decomposing waste produces methane — a potent greenhouse gas that, if left uncaptured, warms the planet at 28 times the rate of carbon dioxide over a century. Capture it, combust it, and you generate electricity while preventing atmospheric damage. The fuel is free. The supply is continuous. The landfill is already there.
And yet, for every success story, there is a project that sputtered, stalled, or quietly shut down. The EPA's Landfill Methane Outreach Program tracks 542 operational landfill gas energy projects nationwide — but it also identifies 444 candidate landfills where projects could work economically and simply do not exist. Dozens of previously operational projects have gone offline over the past two decades. The gap between potential and performance is not a mystery. It is a catalogue of specific, solvable problems that the industry has been slow to address.
The Invisible Saboteur: Siloxanes
If you wanted to design a contaminant purpose-built to destroy power generation equipment, you would be hard-pressed to improve on siloxanes. These silicon-based organic compounds enter the waste stream through an unremarkable list of consumer products: shampoos, deodorants, cosmetics, cleaning sprays, silicone caulk, industrial lubricants. Once in the landfill, they volatilize and mix with the methane rising through the waste mass.
The problem begins at combustion. When landfill gas containing siloxanes is burned in a reciprocating engine or turbine, the silicon oxidizes into silicon dioxide — essentially, microscopic glass. This silica deposits as a hard, abrasive coating on pistons, cylinder heads, valves, spark plugs, and turbocharger blades. The deposits are crystalline, tenacious, and extremely difficult to remove without damaging the underlying metal surfaces.
The consequences cascade quickly. Combustion efficiency drops. Emissions increase. Lubricating oil becomes contaminated with silica particles, accelerating wear throughout the engine. Spark plugs foul. Valves fail to seat properly. In severe cases, engines that should run for 30,000 hours between major overhauls require complete teardowns after as few as 5,000 hours — a sixfold increase in maintenance frequency that can destroy a project's financial model overnight.
Engine and turbine manufacturers are well aware of the problem. Most specify maximum allowable siloxane concentrations in their warranty terms — and will void those warranties without hesitation when the limits are exceeded. For a project operator who has just invested several million dollars in generation equipment, a voided warranty is not an inconvenience. It is a potential death sentence for the project.
The cruel irony is that siloxane removal technology exists and works. Activated carbon adsorption, refrigeration and condensation systems, and silica gel filtration can all reduce siloxane concentrations to safe levels. But these treatment systems add capital cost, operational complexity, and ongoing maintenance requirements of their own. A carbon adsorption system for a mid-sized landfill gas project can cost $200,000 to $500,000 to install and requires regular media replacement — an expense that many project developers, particularly at smaller landfills, fail to budget adequately at the outset.
The Gas That Will Not Hold Still
Landfill gas is not natural gas. This seems obvious, but the distinction is routinely underestimated in project planning. Pipeline-quality natural gas is roughly 95 percent methane with predictable trace components. Landfill gas is typically 45 to 60 percent methane and 40 to 60 percent carbon dioxide, with a shifting cocktail of nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen sulfide, and hundreds of volatile organic compounds. That composition changes — sometimes significantly — from week to week, season to season, and well to well within the same landfill.
The variability matters because internal combustion engines and gas turbines are designed to operate within specific fuel quality parameters. When methane content drops, the energy content of the gas drops with it. Engines lose power. Turbines lose efficiency. Control systems struggle to maintain stable combustion. If the methane content falls below roughly 35 to 40 percent, most generation equipment cannot sustain operation at all.
Oxygen intrusion is a particularly dangerous form of variability. Landfill gas collection systems work by applying vacuum to extraction wells drilled into the waste mass. If the vacuum is set too high — a condition called "over-pull" — ambient air is drawn into the wellfield. This introduces oxygen and nitrogen that dilute the gas and reduce its heating value. Worse, oxygen in the waste mass can trigger aerobic decomposition, which generates heat rather than methane and can, in extreme cases, cause subsurface fires that threaten the entire landfill.
Hydrogen sulfide presents yet another challenge. This corrosive gas attacks metal components throughout the collection and generation system — piping, compressors, heat exchangers, engine internals. At high concentrations, it is also acutely toxic to workers. Treatment is essential but adds another layer of cost and complexity.
The fundamental issue is that many project developers treat landfill gas as if it were a conventional fuel with conventional reliability. It is not. It is a variable, contaminated, biologically produced gas that requires continuous monitoring, frequent adjustment, and sophisticated treatment — and projects that fail to account for this reality in their engineering and budgeting tend to fail within the first few years of operation.
The Economics That Do Not Add Up
A mid-sized landfill gas collection and flare system serving a 40-acre wellfield carries installed capital costs of approximately $1.3 million, with annual operation and maintenance costs around $221,000. The generation equipment — engines, turbines, or microturbines — adds substantially more. A 3-megawatt reciprocating engine installation can cost $3 million to $5 million, depending on site conditions and gas treatment requirements. Annual maintenance for engine-based generation runs $180 to $210 per kilowatt of installed capacity.
Against these costs, revenue depends on the price of electricity and the availability of renewable energy credits or other incentives. In many wholesale electricity markets, the price per megawatt-hour has not kept pace with the rising costs of operating LFGTE equipment. The result is a margin squeeze that leaves little room for the unexpected — and in landfill gas projects, the unexpected is routine.
This economic pressure explains, in part, the dramatic shift toward renewable natural gas. Of the 92 new landfill gas facilities that opened in the United States between 2020 and 2025, 84 percent were RNG projects rather than electricity generation. The reason is straightforward: the federal Renewable Fuel Standard assigns tradeable credits to RNG used as transportation fuel, and those credits can be worth significantly more per unit of energy than electricity sales. In 2024, the combined value of RNG credits and commodity natural gas often exceeded the revenue available from electricity generation by a factor of two or more.
The market is rational. Developers follow the money. But the consequence is that electricity generation — the application most directly useful to local communities and microgrid resilience — is being starved of investment in favor of pipeline injection that sends the energy value of landfill gas to distant consumers.
The Staffing Problem Nobody Discusses
Running a landfill gas-to-energy facility is not a set-it-and-forget-it operation. Each extraction well must be monitored regularly — the EPA recommends at least monthly for compliance, but energy recovery projects typically need weekly or even daily attention. Technicians must balance vacuum levels across dozens of wells, interpret gas composition data, adjust flow rates, and respond to changes in the waste mass that affect gas production. The generation equipment requires its own specialized maintenance: oil changes, spark plug replacements, filter changes, valve adjustments, emissions monitoring, and periodic major overhauls.
This work requires a particular combination of skills — part power plant operator, part environmental technician, part mechanic. The people who can do it well are not abundant, and they are not cheap. Rural landfills, where many LFGTE opportunities exist, face an especially acute staffing challenge. Competitive wages, training programs, and career pathways are essential but rarely prioritized in project budgets.
When staffing falls short, the consequences are predictable. Wells go unmonitored. Vacuum levels drift. Gas quality deteriorates. Equipment damage accelerates. Small problems compound into large ones. A project that could have operated successfully for 20 years instead limps along for five before the owner decides that the cost of continued operation exceeds the return.
How to Fix It
None of these problems are insurmountable. The technology exists. The gas exists. The need exists. What is missing is a more honest and rigorous approach to project development — one that treats landfill gas as the complex fuel it actually is, rather than the simple fuel we wish it were.
Budget for gas treatment from day one. Siloxane removal, hydrogen sulfide scrubbing, and moisture management are not optional add-ons. They are essential infrastructure. Any project pro forma that does not include realistic gas treatment costs is a fantasy, and lenders and investors should treat it as such.
Invest in continuous monitoring. Real-time gas composition monitoring — using online analyzers for methane, oxygen, and key contaminants — allows operators to adjust collection and treatment systems proactively rather than reactively. The cost of continuous monitoring equipment has fallen significantly in recent years, and the return on investment in avoided equipment damage is substantial.
Design for variability. Generation equipment should be selected and configured to handle the full expected range of gas quality, not just the average. Modern engine management systems can adjust air-fuel ratios and timing dynamically, but only if the project is designed to take advantage of these capabilities. Oversizing gas treatment systems slightly — building in margin — is almost always cheaper than dealing with the consequences of undersizing.
Train and retain skilled operators. This means competitive compensation, structured training programs, and clear career paths. The cost of a well-paid, experienced operator is a fraction of the cost of a catastrophic engine failure caused by operator error or neglect.
Realign policy incentives. Federal and state policy should recognize the distinct value of landfill-gas electricity generation — particularly for microgrid and community resilience applications — rather than funneling all incentives toward RNG. Production tax credits, investment tax credits, and resilience-focused grant programs could help level the playing field. States should streamline interconnection and islanding regulations for landfill-gas microgrids.
Start with feasibility, not optimism. The EPA's LFGcost-Web tool and LMOP database provide excellent starting points for preliminary economic assessment. But too many projects move forward on optimistic gas production estimates and best-case equipment performance. Conservative assumptions save projects. Optimistic ones kill them.
The Opportunity We Keep Wasting
The United States operates roughly 2,600 municipal solid waste landfills. Of these, 542 have operational energy projects, and 444 more are identified candidates. That leaves over 1,600 landfills producing methane that is either flared unproductively or — worse — vented directly into the atmosphere. Even among the candidate sites, the conversion rate has been sluggish. The technology is proven. The environmental case is overwhelming. The energy is there for the taking.
At the EPR Foundation, we believe that the pattern of failure in landfill gas-to-energy is not evidence that the concept is flawed. It is evidence that the execution has been sloppy. Projects have been undercapitalized, underengineered, and understaffed. Developers have chased incentives rather than building durable infrastructure. And policymakers have allowed the perfect — pipeline-quality RNG — to become the enemy of the good — local electricity that serves the communities bearing the burden of the landfill.
Every ton of methane that escapes a landfill is a failure of infrastructure and imagination. Every LFGTE project that shuts down prematurely is a failure of planning and execution. These are not inevitable outcomes. They are choices — and we can make better ones.
The EPR Foundation supports rigorous, well-engineered landfill gas-to-energy development that prioritizes community benefit, operational durability, and honest economics over speculative returns. The gas is already being produced. The only question is whether we capture its value or let it drift into the sky.