Car Manufacturer Uses Landfill Gas

January 2003

The BMW automobile manufacturing in Spartanburg has become the first non-utility company in South Carolina to use landfill methane gas as a source of energy in more than two decades. In April 20002, BMW signed a 20-year contract to purchase the gas from a Waste Management, Inc. landfill located about 10 miles away. Ameresco Energy Services of Farmington, Massachusetts, cleans the gas, compresses it, and pumps through a pipeline it built to BMW to fuel four turbines at the plant. The turbines owned and operated by Ameresco generate electricity and heat water, supplying approximately 20% of the facility's energy needs. As of January 2003, the BMW system is built and Ameresco is testing it for commissioning. When it starts up at the end of the month, it will be the only non-utility landfill gas facility operating in the state. For more information, see the Ameresco press release.

The South Carolina Energy Office (SCEO) helped put the project together in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Energy's Southeast Regional Biomass Energy Program and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Landfill Gas Outreach Program. The project has the equivalent environmental benefit of removing 61,000 cars a year from South Carolina highways and saving 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil annually.