Archaea Energy, a bp subsidiary, recently celebrated the opening of its first renewable gas (RNG) plant in Pennsylvania, developed through a partnership with Waste Connections. The plant is adjacent to the Bethlehem Landfill in Lower Saucon Township owned by a Waste Connections subsidiary.
“We are safely and efficiently scaling up at pace and building momentum with this new plant in Bethlehem,” Archaea Energy CEO Starlee Sykes said. “Archaea has brought six plants online to date in 2024, and we’re proud to continue to bring our commitment to capture landfill emissions and provide customers with lower-emission, lower-carbon fuel to the Keystone State.”
The Bethlehem Landfill plant can process up to 3,500 standard cubic feet of landfill gas per minute (scfm) into RNG — enough gas to heat more than 14,000 homes annually, according to the EPA’s Landfill Gas Energy Benefits Calculator.
The Bethlehem Landfill plant converts landfill gas, a natural byproduct of the decomposition of waste, collected from the landfill into RNG, the use of which can lead to local air quality benefits and an increase and diversity of domestic energy production, according to the EPA.
The partnership with Archaea and Waste Connections spans several years. In addition to the new RNG plant in Pennsylvania, Archaea owns and operates RNG plants adjacent to landfills owned by Waste Connections in Nebraska, New York and Oklahoma. The companies also have plants that convert landfill gas to electricity in Washington, Colorado and Oregon.
With the 2022 acquisition of Archaea, bp is the largest RNG producer in the U.S.
Waste Connections is an integrated solid waste services company that provides non-hazardous waste collection, transfer and disposal services, including by rail, along with resource recovery primarily through recycling and renewable fuels generation. The company serves approximately nine million residential, commercial and industrial customers in mostly exclusive and secondary markets across 46 states in the U.S. and six provinces in Canada.
