Waste Today – BMW Extends LFG-to-Energy Project at South Carolina Plant

Twenty years ago, BMW Group began using recycled methane gas from a local landfill to provide electricity and hot water to its BMW Manufacturing plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina. As a result, the company has saved more than 9,200 tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions each year.

Currently, about 20 percent of the Spartanburg plant’s total energy needs (electricity and heat) are provided by landfill gas.

Given the success of the initiative, BMW Manufacturing has announced it will extend its partnership with Ameresco Inc., a Framingham, Massachusetts-based renewable energy company, for an additional eight years. Ameresco constructed the 9.5-mile pipeline from the Palmetto Landfill to the Spartanburg plant. This extended partnership will reduce nearly 74,000 tons of CO2 emissions over the next eight years.

“For two decades, this project has been a win-win for upstate South Carolina. It greatly reduces CO2 emissions, resulting in cleaner, healthier air for everyone to breathe,” BMW Manufacturing President and CEO Robert Engelhorn says. “Intelligent resource management and the fight against climate change are expressions of our sense of responsibility. The BMW Group will reduce CO2 emissions per vehicle by 40 percent from 2019 levels by 2030 across the spectrum.”

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