Post - Blog
The overlooked energy resource hiding in global landfills
- 7 days ago (2026-10-16)
- Junior Isles
Will Llewellyn, UK CEO, Waga Energy
PowerTransTech 2026
Deep under thousands of landfill sites across the globe lies a valuable renewable energy source which is largely untapped. Landfill gas, a methane-rich mixture of gases, is created as organic material buried within these sites decomposes in the absence of oxygen. If allowed to leak into the atmosphere, methane is a harmful greenhouse gas. If captured and flared, the damage to our climate is reduced, but its energy content is wasted. Upgrading the landfill gas into biomethane, however, makes it dispatchable, grid-compatible and a homegrown source of renewable energy.
As global gas markets are increasingly volatile and at the mercy of geopolitics, countries too heavily reliant on external gas sources face growing vulnerabilities in their energy infrastructures. Landfill biomethane offers a local, weather-independent, energy source that is delivered to consumers through existing gas grid infrastructure. This combination of attributes is rare among renewable energy sources – solar and wind are weather-dependent, for example, and other low-carbon options often take years for new infrastructure to be built. Simply put, landfill biomethane has huge potential in contributing towards a nation’s energy security, climate commitments and economic growth as it is a drop-in renewable replacement for natural gas.
Some countries like France, Spain, Canada and the US have deployed landfill biomethane sensibly and strategically using proven technology, but others, including the UK, are lagging. The deployment model works well commercially, using the same downstream technology and supply chains as anaerobic digestion plants, and yet existing landfill gas capacity in the UK remains largely directed towards on-site electricity generation rather than biomethane production. This is because public policy has historically been built around incentivising control of landfill gas via subsidised electricity generation rather than biomethane.
France, on the other hand, has rapidly scaled landfill biomethane injection into its gas grid with the support of clear government policies over the past decade, including guaranteed 15-year fixed-rate tariffs for grid injection, and a newer certificate scheme – Biogas Production Certificates ( or CPBs in French). This framework has been extended through 2041, in support of a clear target of 44 TWh of grid-injected biomethane by 2030. At this pivotal moment, I am in favour of landfill biomethane in the UK competing on a level playing field with electricity generation from landfill gas at the UK’s largest landfills and I continue to lobby the government and key policymakers.
Let’s take the UK as a case study for what a country’s untapped potential can look like. The UK has around 540 landfill sites together representing more than 8 TWh of energy to valorise. Not every landfill site is suitable for biomethane conversion, but my estimate is that 100 of the largest landfills alone could deliver up to 5.5 TWh of biomethane in the short term – enough to fuel up to 10,000 gas-powered heavy goods vehicles. Existing sites will continue to generate significant gas volumes for decades to come which gives biomethane a long runway for projects to be rolled out. The evolving political landscape in the UK though, coupled with the government’s impending decision relating to Jackdaw and Rosebank in the North Sea, have meant that we have faced an extended period of uncertainty and it has been hard to initiate and implement new policies. The time is now ripe for change and for landfill biomethane to be viewed as a reliable domestic asset.
For further context and a few lessons which provide a useful reference point as the UK considers how to best maximise the value of its own landfill gas resource in the post-RO era, our technology was recently deployed at a site in the US and we made the following significant observations:
- Electricity generation is increasingly outcompeted by biomethane as soon as a flexible upgrading technology can process the site's actual gas quality;
- Replacing engines with technology like ours can increase landfill-gas captured by almost 20%; and
- The shift can also unlock new royalty revenues for the public landowner and support the expansion of the gas collection system – a virtuous loop between methane mitigation and renewable energy production
In other words: moving from electricity to biomethane is not only an energy-mix decision; it is also a methane-abatement strategy. Which raises an important question relating to additionality – is this truly new decarbonisation, or is it existing captured gas being relabelled? The answer is nuanced as the real additionality comes from displacing fossil natural gas at the point of use, something governments should consider when creating suitable support mechanisms.
A downstream shift – acquiring sources of energy instead of just buying energy on the open market – is evident with utility executives, power plant operators, and project developers and is something I am also seeing in the way energy security is being built.
These downstream players are increasingly finding ways to secure their own sources of energy, including by acquiring landfill sites for biomethane production. To these forward-looking operators, a landfill site isn’t a waste as it can produce a steady, local supply of renewable energy that can be injected into the grid, and in this regard, offers them price stability and import independence.
A key barrier remains in the face of effectively unlocking landfill biomethane and the solution lies in clever policy design. To achieve success, operators must be incentivised to switch from electricity generation to biomethane injection, and this ‘push’ must come from the government. Governments that truly prioritise energy security and decarbonisation should look at whether their support mechanisms create this level playing field I referenced earlier. A few ways policy could encourage advancements in landfill biomethane are for the UK’s Green Gas Support Scheme (GGSS) to offer comparable value and multi-year security they have historically given to subsidise electricity generation, to creatively bridge support as older schemes like the RO wind down, to simplify grid connection processes and costs, and to formally recognise biomethane as displacing fossil gas.
A growing number of countries around the world continue to make advancements in balancing their energy independence, climate commitments and domestic economic growth, and there are several lessons the UK can learn from them. In my opinion, landfill biomethane creates alignment of all three pieces of this complicated puzzle, and it’s time we gave this overlooked resource the policy attention it deserves.