I spent the first three days of this past week at the Landfill Methane Outreach Program’s (LMOP’s) 2009 conference in Baltimore, MD, being treated to a group of interesting and provocative presentations, several of which had to do with the trading or sale of credits or offsets related to landfill gas. Other than an article, Selling LFG Carbon Credits by Jim Warner, executive director of the Lancaster County (PA) Solid Waste Management Authority, I’ve kept the subject at arm’s length. This was partly because I was unsure of where things were headed in that arena, but also because the more I read up on the various programs and approaches, the more I came to realize the complexities involved. Last week’s LMOP experience did two things: (1) it elevated my prior IQ (ignorance quotient) to stratospheric heights, and (2) convinced me that despite their complexities, these credits and offsets had evolved to the point that they were significant participants in the waste management equation.
Lucky for us both I have neither the slightest inclination to try to understand and then regurgitate the permutations and intricacies involved in these practices, nor do I feel that an article or two in the magazine could begin to unravel their mysteries, but…what I can do is prevail on the people who deal with such things for a living to participate in an online forum at our Web site and in our newsletters. (If you fall into this category, please let me know so that we can have access to your knowledge and experience.) Once we’ve set down the basics, we’ll open the forum to discussions and questions.
For those of you involved with landfill gas, let me encourage you to attend SWANA’s Landfill Gas Symposium at Atlanta, GA, on March 10–12, 2009 (http://lfg.swana.org/), and check out what LMOP is up to by visiting www.epa.gov/lmop on the Web.