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 Documents, Tools, and Resources
LFGE Benefits Calculator
The LFGE Benefits Calculator can be used to estimate direct, avoided, and total greenhouse gas reductions, as well as environmental and energy benefits, for the current year of your landfill gas energy (LFGE) project. For both electricity generation and direct-use projects, reductions of greenhouse gas emissions are derived from capturing and destroying landfill methane. Greenhouse gases are also reduced by the offset of carbon dioxide emissions. Electricity generation projects displace carbon dioxide that would have otherwise been generated from fossil fuels burned at conventional power plants. For direct-use projects, the methane in landfill gas displaces fossil fuels and avoids carbon dioxide that would have otherwise been released.
Reductions of methane and carbon dioxide are expressed in equivalent environmental and energy benefits within the LFGE Benefits Calculator. For example, the total 2008 benefits for a typical 3-megawatt (MW) electricity generation project are approximately equal to any one of the following:
Environmental Benefits
- Annual greenhouse gas emissions from 23,600 passenger vehicles
- Carbon sequestered annually by 29,300 acres of pine or fir forests
- Carbon dioxide emissions from burning 670 railcars’ worth of coal
- Carbon dioxide emissions from 14.6 million gallons of gasoline consumed
and are approximately equal to the following:
Energy Benefits
And the total 2008 benefits for a typical direct-use project using 1,000 standard cubic feet per minute (scfm) of landfill gas are approximately equal to any one of the following:
Environmental Benefits
- Annual greenhouse gas emissions from 21,700 passenger vehicles
- Carbon sequestered annually by 26,900 acres of pine or fir forests
- Carbon dioxide emissions from 275,000 barrels of oil consumed
- Carbon dioxide emissions from 13.4 million gallons of gasoline consumed
and are approximately equal to the following:
Energy Benefits
Download 2008 LFGE Benefits Calculator (XLS, 243 KB) (Download a free Excel spreadsheet viewer.  )
In the 2008 version of the calculator, the environmental equivalencies were changed to reflect those in the Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator on the EPA Clean Energy Web site.
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