Why is there such a push for landfill gas to be considered “renewable” energy?
Landfill gas and other “biomass” (incineration) technologies are cheaper to develop than wind (which is the next cheapest “renewable” technology). Energy from landfill gas projects also provides the easiest-to-obtain new renewable (built since the inception of green energy marketing) for the Green-e certification process. It is because of this that we don’t expect to see as much development of truly clean renewables from green energy marketing as we expect to see development of polluting landfill gas and biomass technologies. While not a renewable energy source, cheap natural gas is also likely to undercut renewables. Until we succeed at knocking out polluting technologies like “biomass” from the definition of renewables, we won’t see the true potential for long overdue wind development.
