Seattle-Area Landfill To Fuel Puget Energy Power Plants
07 Avril 2009 - 2:38AM
Dow Jones News
A unit of Puget Energy Inc. (PSD) plans to use waste methane gas
captured from a Seattle-area landfill to help fuel its power plants
and prevent the heat-trapping gas from entering the atmosphere.
Puget Sound Energy, King County and landfill-gas developer Bio
Energy-Washington said Monday the project is expected to provide
enough methane gas to generate about 287,000 megawatt-hours of
electricity a year, enough to power 24,000 homes.
The project will be the third-largest landfill-gas energy
facility in the U.S., the companies said.
Bio Energy, owned by private equity firm First Reserve Corp.,
will build and operate a facility to process the gas, and a
quarter-mile pipeline to ship the gas to Williams Cos.' (WMB)
Northwest Pipeline system. The company will also install equipment
at the landfill to generate electricity from some of the captured
gas.
Bio Energy estimates that it will deliver to Puget from the
landfill about 5.5 million cubic feet per day of processed methane
over 20 years. King County estimates its sales of methane gas to
Puget could be between $800,000 and $1 million a year, depending on
natural gas prices and the amount of gas sold, said county
spokesman Doug Williams.
Methane is 20 times more potent then carbon dioxide in trapping
heat in earth's atmosphere, according to the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency.
In February, a group of investors led by units of Australian
bank Macquarie Group Ltd. (MQG.AU) completed a $7.4 billion
purchase of Puget Energy, taking the company private.
-By Cassandra Sweet, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-439-6468; cassandra.sweet@dowjones.com