New initiatives and policies are popping up quickly to reduce methane emissions from landfills. The Executive Branch released the U.S. Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan in November 2021 which included the goal to increase the overall collection and destruction of landfill methane in the United States to at least 70 percent of the amount generated by 2030 – part of the strategy to achieve this goal is for LMOP to focus its outreach and technical assistance efforts on individual landfills that are not already collecting landfill gas. In international terms, the United States and more than 100 other countries have signed the Global Methane Pledge, a collective effort kicked off at the COP26 Summit in November 2021 to reduce global methane emissions at least 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030. Additionally, EPA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration established an interagency agreement to halve the food loss and waste by 2030.
Several Congressional funding actions have also expanded existing funding mechanisms and introduced new funding opportunities for reducing landfill methane emissions and increasing clean energy from biogas derived from municipal solid waste. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in November 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act passed in August 2022. Together these bills spur investment methane avoidance activities and methane reduction activities through grants and tax credits.

LMOP assists landfills and other stakeholders with landfill gas energy project development through direct technical assistance to assess feasibility of landfill gas energy projects, data sharing, informational materials and webinars, and fostering partnerships. In addition to encouraging landfill methane capture, EPA also encourages the avoidance of landfill methane generation by diverting organic waste to other management pathways such as anaerobic digestion or composting. Recent additions to the LMOP resources library are documents “An Overview of Renewable Natural Gas from Biogas” and “Downstream Management of Organic Waste in the United States: Strategies for Methane Mitigation”, updates to the LFG Energy Project Development Handbook featuring best practices for landfill gas collection system design and operations, and a revamped national map of landfills and projects that now includes layers for environmental justice and Tribal areas.