On 23 and 24 June 2026, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission organized a workshop on monitoring diffuse methane emissions from landfills in Paris, which ELA participated in. The workshop was part of the process of defining best-available techniques (BAT) for landfills. Methane emissions from landfills stem from landfilling untreated municipal waste with high shares of organic material. Under anaerobic conditions, biologically degradable waste can produce significant methane emissions – a harmful greenhouse gas that, considering its entire formation process, has 28 times the negative impact on the climate as CO2. Therefore, no untreated municipal waste, should be landfilled at all – it is clearly not a best-available technique.
The phase-out of organic waste landfilling is already outlined in the Landfill Directive, and ELA strongly supports any means to achieve this goal. If organic material has been landfilled, a state-of-the-art gas collection system must be installed to channel methane emissions that can then be neutralized. Large amounts of diffuse methane emissions only occur if a gas collection system is either not installed or not properly run.
It is without question that the European landfill landscape offers for both, landfills with a high methane emissions load and landfills with no or very little emission load. At the workshop, we have been presented various measuring methods that each have own advantages and disadvantages. In order to get reliable emission data, a method must go beyond a point measurement that only captures concentration. With this regard, we have not seen a method that would allow for a sufficient level of certainty. In fact, a mix of modelling and measurement will be needed to estimate potential emissions.