Manatee County Unveils $50 Million Facility to Transform Landfill Waste into Energy

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In Manatee County, Florida, the Lena Road Landfill receives over 41,000 tons of waste monthly. As this refuse decomposes, it produces methane gas, a byproduct with the potential for energy production.

Presently, only about a quarter of the methane collected at the landfill is utilized to power a nearby wastewater treatment plant. The remaining 75% is simply flared off, essentially wasting a valuable resource. However, this inefficiency is set to change.

In collaboration with Nopetro Energy and Johnson Controls, Manatee County plans to transform this waste into a valuable resource by converting the methane into clean fuel.

Patrick Shea, the Utilities Director for Manatee County, highlights the significance of this endeavor: “We are currently wasting that product. This will create a beneficial reuse for that product, so we are converting waste into worth.”

Construction on the $50 million facility is slated to begin next year.

“This is Nopetro’s second of these projects from landfills, and we basically clean up the gas, run it through, take all the chemicals out, run it through the system, purify it and inject it into the grid. It is a real win-win because it keeps the methane and the pollutants from going into the atmosphere, it cleans it up, and it puts it onto the grid which gives us locally derived natural gas in the state of Florida,” said Travis Payne with Nopetro Energy.

Once complete, the facility will capture the entirety of the gas coming from the landfill. It is slated to cut emissions equal to about 5 million gallons of gasoline each year and produce enough energy to power more than 4,500 homes.

It will also create 50 jobs during construction and five permanent positions once the facility is up and running, along with a new revenue stream for the county. Payne said Nopetro Energy will own and operate the facility and pay royalties to the county.

“This would create a revenue stream for the county. As opposed to trying to deal with it as a waste product, operating that flare, kind of doing the oversight and the regulatory stuff to manage natural gas, we are now transferring that to an expert, Nopetro Energy that will use it, clean it and make it a valuable commodity that the county will benefit from the financial aspects of that,” Shea said.

The hope is for construction to be complete before the end of 2027.