While solar panels and wind turbines are the two best-known methods of generating renewable energy, they aren’t the only approaches. The day after we learned that Apple has become a power company, we hear that it has just been given the go-ahead to employ a particularly cool method.

Landfill gas utilization traps the methane gas given off from landfill sites and either converts it into pipeline-grade gas or uses it to generate electricity. It’s doubly environmentally friendly, generating power from waste but also preventing the release of methane – a greenhouse gas – into the atmosphere …

Hickory Record reports that Apple has just been given the go-ahead to construct a landfill gas energy plant in North Carolina. In Apple’s case, it will use fuel cells to generate electricity from the gas.

A new lease agreement between Catawba County and Apple will allow for the construction of a renewable energy facility that harnesses landfill gas […] The lease lasts for 16 years with an option to go five years longer. In a separate Landfill Gas Sales Agreement with Quadrogen Power Systems, Inc., the county agreed to sell about 40 percent of its landfill methane. Quadrogen will treat the methane for use in the Apple facility.

A Catawba County spokesperson described the technology as ‘the next great energy source that is clean and safe for citizens across the entire country.’

Apple has a major data center in North Carolina which is already powered entirely by renewable energy, using a mix of solar panels and biogas cells.

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