I saw a statistic in Fortune magazine this morning regarding landfill methane. It stated that 1,400 megawatts of electricity could be generated each year by 600 landfills that the EPA indicated were big enough to convert methane into energy. Yet, these landfills (unlike Puente Hills near Los Angeles) have not invested in this technology. This would be enough to power about 900,000 homes per year. This led me to thinking more about methane. When I wrote about landfill methane before, I was impressed that Puente Hills invested this technology given its size and how much landfill waste was involved. Now I realize that the sheer size of Puente Hills was probably the very reason this project was undertaken in the first place; it may simply not make sense to install this infrastructure in smaller landfills because not that much power may be produced. However, I am still impressed that Puente Hills has accomplished this feat while others have not. I would think that these huge landfills would mostly be in or near major metropolitan areas, areas that consume tremendous amounts of power. Because energy tends to be imported by these cities and exported by more rural areas with all of the coal-fired power plants or nuclear power plants, residents in the urban areas may not even think about (or care about) where their electricity is coming from. Yet, if methane near these urban areas is harnessed and converted into electricity for the cities, it may ease the burden on the more rural areas. Perhaps this would allow utilities time and money to focus a bit more on fitting other means of alternative energy into their product mix? In any case, I feel that there should be more incentives in place for these larger landfills to develop the infrastructure to use this methane. If the U.S. government wants it used (to decrease the greenhouse effect of the methane rising into the atmosphere and to increase energy availability) it should either cough up money to make this happen or give huge tax breaks. Maybe this is already being offered in some manner. However, it is obviously not being done sufficiently, as methane to power almost 1 million homes each year is being wasted.