“By partnering with Puget Sound Energy and Bio Energy-Washington, King County is fulfilling our commitment to a cleaner, greener future,” said King County Executive Ron Sims on April 6. “We are reducing carbon dioxide emissions roughly equal to taking 22,000 average passenger cars off the road each year, and we’re creating a valuable commodity from what was previously considered a useless byproduct.” Read More

Today, King County’s landfill gas is piped to a privately owned and operated on-site landfill gas-to-energy plant that scrubs it clean and processes it into pipeline quality natural gas that in turn provides the energy needs for roughly 24,000 homes every day. That means the garbage you throw away, which once contributed to King County’s carbon footprint, is now being converted into a clean energy that can power all the homes within a city the size of SeaTac – with energy to spare. Read More

“King County is taking advantage of the emerging renewable energy market to turn landfill gasses into energy to power people’s homes and revenue for the county,” Councilman Larry Phillips, Environment and Transportation Committee chairman and a sponsor of the ordinance, said in a statement. “As one of the first and largest projects of this kind in the nation, we are demonstrating that reducing greenhouse gas emissions through innovation pays off.” Read More

Kimberly Harris, executive vice president and chief resource officer for PSE, said, “We’re going to use the landfill gas to light people’s homes. This waste-to-energy project is an example of how we, as a society, can transform long-held practices into more environmentally sustainable actions.” Read More