Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google


U New Hampshire Powered with Landfill Gas

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 05/26/09

The University of New Hampshire has begun powering its campus primarily with landfill gas, a first for a campus in the United States. The 5 million square-foot campus is receiving up to 85 percent of its electricity and heat from purified natural gas through EcoLine, a landfill gas-to-energy project that uses purified methane gas from a nearby landfill.

"It's a wonderful project because it's one of the few that makes both perfect economic sense as well as environmental sense," said President Mark Huddleston. "It reduces our dependence on fossil fuel. It also helps stabilize our energy costs, and, indeed, gives us the opportunity to invest money in other alternative energy projects."

EcoLine is a partnership with Waste Management's Turnkey Recycling and Environmental Enterprise (TREE) in Rochester, where the naturally occurring by-product of landfill decomposition is collected then piped 12.7 miles to the Durham campus, where the fuel powers a 7.9 megawatt turbine that provides electricity and heat.

The total cost of the project, which included construction of the pipeline and a gas processing plant at TREE, is $49 million. UNH will sell the renewable energy certificates (RECs) generated by using landfill gas to help finance the overall cost of the project and to invest in additional energy efficiency projects on campus. In addition, UNH has purchased a second generator for its cogeneration plant and will sell power in excess of campus needs back to the electric grid.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Digital Network of User Profiles and Data Connections

    Microsoft, RSA Make Identity Security Push in the Age of AI

    Two of the bigger authentication announcements to come out of the recent RSA Conference both point in the same direction: Organizations need a more flexible, unified approach to identity security, especially as AI agents start acting alongside human workers.

  • Blue digital wireframe classical building structure

    Before AI, Fix Your Data

    Institutions don't have to solve every data problem before they can begin using AI responsibly. But they do need to treat information as a strategic asset — not a byproduct of operations — and start building toward AI-ready data now.

  • businesspeople in silhouette with colorful network lines

    Report: AI Will Reshape Work More than Replace It, but Global Impact Is Uneven

    Richer countries face greater exposure to AI-driven changes than developing countries, which are less exposed to AI but risk being left behind, according to a joint report from the International Labour Organization and World Bank.

  • illustration of people collaborating around large interlocking gears and data charts

    Why ERP and AI Initiatives Stall at the Execution Layer: A CIO Perspective

    Higher education institutions are investing heavily in ERP modernization, analytics, and AI-driven capabilities. Yet even with these investments, many are running into the same issue: turning insight into coordinated, timely action.