GM Largest Corporate User of Landfill Gas

General Motors is another automotive manufacturer investing in waste-based energy. The company proudly describes itself as the largest direct, corporate user of landfill gas as a replacement for natural gas in the United States. Starting in 2000, General Motors worked to reduce its natural gas consumption by 25 percent by replacing it with landfill gas.

Seven GM facilities currently have a portion of their energy needs filled through landfill gas, including assembly plants in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Orion, Michigan; and a powertrain plant located in Toledo, Ohio.  Two additional warehouse sites in Grand Blanc and Flint, Mich., utilize landfill gas by purchasing 13 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, which is generated from a landfill gas-to-electricity program. At GM most facilities, the LFG is piped to the plant and combusted in boilers, providing a cost-effective, renewable energy source.

For its Fort Wayne assembly plant, where 3,000 employees produce GM Sierras and Chevy Silverados, GM worked with the National Serv-All (NSA) subsidiary of Republic Services and Toro Energy to collect and deliver landfill gas and retrofit the plant to use it. NSA installed the wells and the collection system necessary to capture the methane at its MacBeth Road landfill. Toro Energy built an 8-mile pipeline to deliver landfill gas from the landfill to the plant. Toro also modified a boiler at the plant to fire landfill gas to produce steam to heat and cool the assembly plant and run process equipment. The project supplies about 16 percent of the plant's energy needs (450,000 million British thermal units per year), currently saving GM $500,000 annually at this site. GM estimates that the landfill gas use at this plant delivers annual greenhouse gas reductions equivalent to planting 6,000 acres of forest, removing the emissions of 4,200 vehicles, or preventing the use of 51,200 barrels of oil. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded GM one of its Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP) awards for the Ft. Wayne Truck Assembly Plant LFG project.

"Landfill gas is a clean-burning fuel and makes a perfect power source for the plant's boilers," says Dave Shenefield, Site Utilities Manager for the Fort Wayne GM assembly plant. “The overall success of this project was due to the combined team effort of GM, Toro Energy, and NSA/Republic Services, working together in the spirit of environmental stewardship. Public perception toward a project such as this has been extremely positive, and the plant has truly gained from this process, both environmentally and in energy savings.”

Collectively the landfill gas capacity at the seven GM operations using the fuel is equivalent to the energy needed to heat over 25,000 households, which represents about 1.6 trillion BTUs per year.  Additionally, landfill gas installations at GM plants have allowed the company to generate annual savings exceeding $5 million. Learn more about GM's commitment to using sustainable energy from landfill gas at GM and Green Car Congress.

Read about more companies using energy from landfills.