Landfill Methane Outreach Program
LFG Energy Benefits Calculator
The LFG Energy Benefits Calculator can be used to estimate direct, avoided, and total greenhouse gas reductions, as well as environmental and energy benefits, for the current year of your landfill gas energy project. For both electricity generation and direct–use projects, reductions of greenhouse gas emissions are derived from capturing and destroying landfill methane. Greenhouse gases are also reduced by the offset of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Electricity generation projects displace CO2 that would have otherwise been generated from fossil fuels burned at conventional power plants. For direct-use projects, the methane in LFG displaces fossil fuels and avoids CO2 that would have otherwise been released.
The LFG Energy Benefits Calculator expresses reductions of methane and CO2 in equivalent environmental and energy benefits. For example, the total 2012 benefits for a typical 3–megawatt electricity generation project are approximately equal to any one of the following environmental benefits:
- Annual greenhouse gas emissions from 24,800 passenger vehicles
- Carbon sequestered annually by 27,000 acres of pine or fir forests
- CO2 emissions from burning 690 railcars' worth of coal
- CO2 emissions from 14.2 million gallons of gasoline consumed
and are approximately equal to the following energy benefit:
- Powering 1,770 homes
The total 2012 benefits for a typical direct–use project using 1,000 standard cubic feet per minute of LFG are approximately equal to any one of the following environmental benefits:
- Annual greenhouse gas emissions from 23,200 passenger vehicles
- Carbon sequestered annually by 25,200 acres of pine or fir forests
- CO2 emissions from 275,000 barrels of oil consumed
- CO2 emissions from 13.3 million gallons of gasoline consumed
and are approximately equal to the following energy benefit:
- Heating 3,400 homes
Download the 2012 LFG Energy Benefits Calculator (XLS) (265 K, About MS Excel 
)
In 2008, the environmental equivalencies in LMOP’s calculator were changed to reflect those in the Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator on the EPA Clean Energy website.