Direct Measurement of Landfill Methane Emissions 2

This project builds on ‘WR1928: Direct Measurement of Landfill Methane Emissions’ which focused on at one recently closed site understanding possible options for direct landfill emissions measurement, and understand the variation in landfill emissions, given changes in local weather and operational parameters.

The focus of the current study will be in the extension of this work to design and deliver a robust and cost-effective survey approach (and underpinning standard operating procedures) as a step towards allowing the quantification of annual site-specific landfill methane emissions (and associated sources of variability) for multiple operational, recently closed, and historically closed landfill sites, of different emission potential.

We anticipate that this project will take a similar approach to WR1928 in combining long term emission measurement (seasonal) with a series of discrete surveys to understand the survey approaches that would be necessary to provide this annual estimate (within a stated level of certainty). This will meet the data integrity required for measured landfill CH4 emissions being reported within the UK National Inventory (and which are aligned with regulatory requirements) and will provide the basis for future regulatory work.