PENN VALLEY, PA — Mike Fenton describes the structure of The Landfill Group as a big box, with four separate entities inside – all connected but able to stand alone supporting both internal development efforts and external third-party business.
One of the oldest and largest family-owned companies in the U.S. dedicated to reaping the benefits of methane captured from landfills, The Landfill Group is vertically integrated, all-encompassing when it comes to landfill gas and its beneficial use.
“Enerdyne Power Systems, the original company (formed in 1991), is the development company,” according to Fenton, the parent company’s Director of Sales and Project Delivery. “In2006, Advance One was founded as a construction company, primarily building gas collection systems.
“Around 2012, Advanced Biogas Systems was founded to manufacture packaged gas processing equipment. Then last year, Jade Biogas Engineering was formed as our engineering group.”
Fenton is a featured speaker at the first Southeast RNG Conference 2023. Assembled by Shale Directories and the RNG Directory, the one-day program will be held on October 4th at the Hilton Charlotte Airport Hotel.
“We are very pleased to have Mike Fenton as a speaker at our Southeast RNG Conference, The Landfill Group is one of the small companies transformed by RNG into an American success story,” said Tom Gellrich, Founder of RNG Directory.
When William “Bill” Brinker formed a company in 1991 focusing on converting landfill gas to energy, he already understood that the uses for landfill gas were varied and ever-evolving.
“From the mid-1990s to 2014-2015, the landfill business primarily was focused on power generation,” Fenton said. “Since that time, the primary use of landfill gas is for renewable natural gas (RNG).”
RNG, the fuel of the moment, is looked to by giant companies like ExxonMobil and Shell, and local Mom and Pops as the fuel with no downside, produced from garbage, waste, manure, and even wastewater.
“It’s a robust and stable market; there are just so many great uses for landfill gas,” according to Fenton. “Today, there is a great deal of expansion and consolidation in the market.”
The Landfill Group executive added he’s unsure which way the use of landfill gas may change over the next five years. RNG is here to stay however there is probably a shift back to the use of biogas for power generation in some cases., He also foresees using biogas to produce hydrogen as one very possible scenario.
“Market needs and technology are ever evolving, who knows what these needs and technology will bring?” Fenton said.
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