Canada's Projects in the National Interest - (an Econogics Series) © 2025

Anthropogenic Methane Capture Utilization and Storage (AMCUS)

Canada has a significant number of closed and active sanitary landfill sites (aka dumps) which leak methane into the atmosphere as the organic material in them decomposes.
A recent example from news media:
McGill study finds Montreal’s buried landfills continue to leak methane (CTV 2025.10.16)

A broad implementation of AMCUS will be a far more effective way to reduce the global warming potential of current greenhouse gas emissions than any CCUS fantasy currently being proposed, and won't require additional research on effective means of doing long-term CO₂ sequestration, err, I mean 'storage'. Implementation sites will generally be near populated areas - so easy to access - and will improve air quality near many Canadians. AMCUS relies on existing technology, has a ready, profitable market in place, and would turn a profit.

There's even a Canadian federal government incentive to do this.

A demonstration project in Ottawa (Trail Road Landfill site) is highly successful producing green electricity fed to the Ontario electrical grid, earning revenue for the City of Ottawa. This approach allows the facility to capture and store the methane continuously, and use it to produce electricity at times of high grid demand, obtaining the highest daily price for the electricity - and revenue. It makes use of the physical electrical grid connection which is already in place to power equipment at the landfill site, and eliminates the need for a new feed-in connection to the natural gas pipeline network, if there even is one in the area capable of receiving the gas. This is not novel technology. A number of other waste material sites in Canada and elsewhere have been capped and carry out methane capture continuously, and there are more to be tapped.
Landfills around the world release a lot of methane - study (Reuters 2022.08.11)
Revealed: the 1,200 big methane leaks from waste dumps trashing the planet (The Guardian 2024.02.12)
UNFCCC on Methane Capture at Landfills and Waste Dumps for Energy Production" (UNFCC circa 2021)

The novel aspect is using the captured methane to create 'green' electricity instead of just venting or flaring it.

The U.S. has over 500 landfill gas capture projects listed, and over 400 additional candidates already.
Canada is reported to be producing about 1.5 megatonnes of landfill gas (methane) annually now, and the baseline is rising over time. (Reducing methane emissions from Canada’s municipal solid waste landfills: discussion paper Figure 1)

Capturing anthropogenic methane leaks and burning the gas provides a factor 100 improvement in GWP on the 10-year time frame. (The appropriate global warming potential (GWP) number for methane is not 25 (government of Canada), or 28 (U.S. EPA GWP₁₀₀ number), or 56 (UN IPCC GWP₂₀ number).

The proper GWP number for methane (10 year timeframe) is 104 per the UN IPCC figures or higher. The 10-year timeframe is most appropriate because methane lasts about a decade in the atmosphere before breaking down.

The 1.5 megatonnes of landfill gas produced annually has the global warming impact equivalent of 150 megatonnes of CO₂ annually.
For context, 150 Mt CO₂e annually is about half of Canada's total reduction goal from 2019 to 2030. In addition, capture, utilization and storage of the landfill gas to produce electricity could actually produce positive net revenue and increase national GDP.

For some reason (free fuel and GHG reduction incentives?), lots of garbage trucks currently run on fossil methane ('clean'), so they could fill up with anthropogenic methane at dump sites with methane capture - a place they go multiple times a day anyway.

Using 'free' local methane instead of pipeline fossil methane from the U.S. could reduce municipal operating costs to fuel the trucks. Using that fuel productively (e.g. to power a truck) would reduce GHG emissions even further by displacing use of other fossil hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline or diesel.

We have the methane satellites now (e.g. GHGSat), and airborne methane sensing and ground level methane detectors to locate more anthrogenic (and fossil) methane sources.

In the unlikely event that the demand for low-cost anthropogenic methane should exceed the supply, we can produce more anthropogenic methane using crop waste and algal bloom biomass biodigestion and composting to make soil amendment (fertilizer plus) without extracting more hydrocarbons.
See my White Paper

For context, the world is now recognizing methane is a bigger problem than previously thought, and we're failing to meet the challenge.
Better data driving action on methane emissions, but more work needed (UN Environmental Program 2025.10.22)
Energy-related methane emissions have still not reached a definitive peak (IEA 2025)

To close, Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) is a futile exercise. It's an industry green-washing campaign which at best kicks the can down the road (the stored CO₂ will eventually leak out of any storage method currently being proposed), at significant cost to taxpayers. (CCUS is NOT sequestration.)

In reality, CCUS was originally implemented at the Weyburn-Midale injection project in Canada as an Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) technology. The CO₂ (carbon dioxide - the predominant greenhous gas) is pumped into an aging oil field to increase pressure and oil recovery rates. The kicker is that the some of same CO₂ is then brought up the wells with the produced oil, gas, water and other substances, and released into the atmosphere at some point in the production process, thus actually INCREASING CO₂ emissions via increased oil production and the re-emission of the CO₂ injected into the oilfield.

[Disclosure: I have submitted comments to the ECCC Carbon Credits / GHG Reduction program, and it rejected my suggestion that the GWP number for methane be changed from 25 to 100 to reflect the GWP₁₀ number set by the UNIPCC a very long time ago. This ECCC program issued its first landfill methane destruction credits in 2024.]

If the work to reduce anthropogenic methane emissions proves successful, the activity can be expanded to reduce methane emissions intensity from fossil methane and oil production, and possibly as part of old production areas where leaking methane remains a significant emissions issue.

If you would like to discuss this topic further, get in touch with me.)

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