Viridi Breaks Ground on Renewable Natural Gas Facility for Clean Energy

Viridi Energy has started construction on a renewable natural gas facility at the City of Lincoln's Bluff Road Landfill, designed to capture methane from decomposing waste and convert it into pipeline-quality fuel capable of meeting the annual heating needs of approximately 12,000 homes. The facility, expected to become operational in the first quarter of 2027, will process around 3,000 standard cubic feet per minute of landfill gas and inject the resulting renewable natural gas into Black Hills Energy's distribution system. The project emerged from a competitive public procurement process in which Lincoln sought a partner to finance, build, own and operate the facility.

 

Why Landfill Methane Capture Matters More Than It Might Seem

 

Landfills generate methane as buried organic waste decomposes without oxygen, and that methane is either flared, converted to carbon dioxide through combustion, or in poorly managed sites released directly into the atmosphere. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over the short term, meaning capturing and productively using it rather than allowing it to escape or simply burning it off delivers an outsized climate benefit relative to the volume of gas involved.

This facility goes a step further than standard flaring by upgrading the captured methane into pipeline-quality renewable natural gas through advanced gas processing technology, turning what would otherwise be a waste emission into a fuel that displaces fossil natural gas in the existing distribution network. That distinction, capturing and monetising the gas rather than merely destroying it, is what converts an environmental liability into a genuine energy resource.

 

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How the Deal Was Structured

 

The project originated through a request for proposals in which Lincoln sought a qualified partner to finance, design, build, own, operate and maintain the facility, and to market and monetise the resulting renewable natural gas. That structure shifts the capital risk and operational responsibility onto Viridi rather than the municipality, letting the city capture the environmental and economic benefit of its landfill gas without funding or operating specialised gas-upgrading infrastructure itself.

Chief executive Dan Crouse said the facility would provide energy equivalent to roughly 10 percent of the households in the community, framing the project as a long-term investment in a local, reliable energy supply rather than a one-off construction milestone. He pointed to Viridi's ability to structure deals across municipal, utility and private-sector partnerships as central to delivering projects with execution certainty.

 

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Part of a Utility's Broader Decarbonisation Push

 

For Black Hills Energy, the facility is its second renewable natural gas partnership in Lincoln and fits within a stated goal of reaching net-zero emissions across its natural gas distribution system by 2035. Chief Sustainability Officer Katie Fleming described the RNG interconnections as supporting the broader low-carbon fuel market while tying into the utility's existing distribution infrastructure, an approach that lets renewable natural gas displace fossil supply without requiring new pipelines or major infrastructure changes for end users.

That compatibility with existing gas infrastructure is one of the more practical advantages of renewable natural gas as a decarbonisation tool: because the upgraded gas is chemically equivalent to fossil natural gas, it can be injected directly into distribution networks and delivered to existing customers without any change to their appliances or connections, unlike alternative fuels that require new delivery infrastructure entirely.

 

Part of a Wider Portfolio

 

The Lincoln facility is the fourth landfill-gas-to-RNG project in Viridi's portfolio and will be commissioned alongside a fifth facility in Texas, bringing the company's total processing capacity across its portfolio to 2.3 million MMBtu. That scale suggests Viridi is replicating a proven project model across multiple municipal landfill sites rather than treating Lincoln as a standalone development, a pattern that could extend renewable natural gas capture to a wider set of landfills as more municipalities pursue similar public procurement processes. Whether the Lincoln facility hits its Q1 2027 operational target and delivers its projected 12,000-home equivalent output will be an early indicator of how reliably this replicable model performs as it scales across Viridi's growing portfolio.