The Climate Trust Awards Funds to Innovative Landfill Gas Project to Offset Global Warming Pollution

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For Immediate Release

The Climate Trust Awards Funds to Innovative Landfill Gas Project to Offset Global Warming Pollution

OREGON, PORTLAND, Jul. 17 -/E-Wire/-- The Climate Trust Board of Directors has approved a contract with Klickitat County Public Utility District No. 1 for a project which will reduce levels of global warming pollution in the atmosphere. This contract, one of five The Trust initiated with its initial $1 million of funding, is The Trust's first renewable energy project.

The project is anticipated to use a state-of-the-art separation process developed by Acrion Technologies and provided by Evergreen Eco-Resources. This process will clean and remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from landfill gas. The cleaned gas will fuel an electric generator. The CO2 that will be captured will be sold commercially. The project will be located at the Roosevelt Regional Landfill in south central Washington.

"We're excited to fund the first commercial-scale demonstration of this innovative environmental technology," said Diana Bodtker, chair of The Climate Trust's Board. The CO2 separator is the product of over a decade of research and development jointly funded by the U. S. Department of Energy and the private sector. "This technology should provide landfill operators with an important tool for countering global warming pollution while enhancing their revenues with carbon dioxide sales," said Bodtker.

The electricity generated by the project will displace electricity that otherwise would have been generated by burning fossil fuel at other power plants. "Since burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, the atmosphere's bottom line will be improved," said Mike Burnett, The Trust's executive director. In addition, the liquid carbon dioxide captured from the landfill gas will be sold to nurseries that currently stimulate plant growth in greenhouses by burning propane to increase carbon dioxide levels. "Displacing the burning of propane provides a second source of carbon dioxide offsets from the project," said Burnett.

The project has another significant environmental benefit. The separator will eliminate nearly all other major air pollutants from the landfill gas. These include volatile organic compounds such as HFCs, PFCs, and SF6, which are potent greenhouse gases, and sulfur compounds such as sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain.

The Climate Trust is a nonprofit organization formed in 1997 in response to landmark Oregon legislation requiring new power plants to counter their global warming pollution impact. This innovative legislation limits the amount of CO2 that a new power plant can release. Power plant developers can comply with the standard by making a payment to The Climate Trust, which uses the funds on projects that reduce atmospheric CO2 levels. Carbon dioxide is the primary gas leading to global warming. These projects are called "offsets" because they offset the release of CO2 from the new Oregon power plants.

"Science tells us that human activity has already initiated rapid climate change, and that this problem will get much worse this century. We must act now to reduce the build-up of CO2 and other global warming pollutants in the atmosphere, or face a runaway climate," said Burnett.

"Funding from The Climate Trust is critical to our decision to move forward with the generator and pursue the separator technology," said Brian Skeahan, Manager of the Klickitat Public Utility District No. 1. "By cleaning the landfill gas with the separator, our generator will run cleaner and require less down-time and cost for maintenance. This project should draw a lot of attention, since the landfill at Roosevelt is the fourth largest in the country." Over the next 30 years, the project is expected to offset 342,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That's equal to the CO2 released by 50,000 cars each driven 15,000 miles.

The Trust's first million dollars came from the 480-megawatt Klamath Cogeneration Project, a state-of-the-industry, combined-cycle, gas-fired power plant now completing construction near Klamath Falls, Oregon. This project is one of five projects that The Trust is contracting for CO2 offsets with funding from the Klamath project. The other projects include innovative financing of renewable energy from wind power in Oregon, internet-based carpool coordination in the Portland metropolitan area, and two projects involving the permanent capture of CO2 by forests. "We're quite pleased with the portfolio of projects that The Trust has assembled," said Peter van Alderwerelt, Vice President of PacifiCorp Power Marketing, the developers of the Klamath Cogeneration Project.

Further information about the landfill gas to energy project and the other four projects will be available at The Climate Trust Web site: http://www.climatetrust.org.

http://www.climatetrust.org

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