Methane gas leaking off Wood County’s landfill is being collected to use as energy.

Methane is a renewable energy source and a product that’s going to waste at the moment, Wood County Commissioner Jim Carter said.

“As long as the landfill is there, it’s a big tea kettle. It’s cooking and the gas is being let off,” Carter said.

The power lines are there, the gas is already there.

“Methane is a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide,” said Kevin Maynard, director of Public Utilities. If they don’t collect it, “it’s just going to be leaking out of the landfill into the atmosphere.”

Younger landfills, ones only about 20 to 30 years old, don’t give off enough gas to make a difference, Carter said. Wood County’s is big enough now.

The process is more of a gradual system, said Ken Reiman, director of Wood County’s Solid Waste District.

From the pipes used to catch the methane, the gas travels into a treatment compressor station. The gas may have to undergo some type of treatment, Reiman said, such as getting moisture out or compressing it so more gas can be used to run machines.

According to Reiman, only a couple of small generators would be added to the current 11. The real key, he said, is to get the project started and see how it’s going to work.

Though Bowling Green already partially runs on wind energy, the methane gas system could become the new “base load,” or one of the primary energy sources.

“The wind doesn’t blow all the time,” Reiman said. But he added that this system should be able to run all the time, while taking into consideration how much trash is dumped and the amount of wells that are used.

In fact, although this is the first time a methane gas system has been based here, buying landfill power from different communities has been going on since 1998. In 2005, 7 percent of Bowling Green’s energy was supplied by landfill gas energy.

So far, the project has gotten as far as drilling wells to where the methane gas is and tying those wells together, but Carter said the actual thought process began three years ago.

“It took a while to tie all the wells together,” he said, but he also thinks the process could be up and running within a year.

Though no contracts for the project have been made at this time, studies have been completed, and now the phase of looking at how it’s going to be structured has started.

Maynard said now that they have the gas study report back and now know the BTU content of the gas, they have a better idea of how much generation is needed.

Positive feedback has been received from the city of Bowling Green, Reiman said. Questions just need to be answered, such as who should provide the generator, who will pay and what the structure is going to be.

Another issue that needs to be worked out is cost.

Methane is competing against coal fire plants. Because of the need for electricity all the time, the coal generators are so large that they don’t cost as much, Reiman said, but methane wouldn’t cost much more.

“Everybody that’s connected to our electrical system would benefit,” Maynard said.