Green gas could add fizz to Coke - Atlanta Business Chronicle:

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Coke is said to be considering tapping two Atlant a landfills as a source of clean-burning natural gas. Methane is naturally produced durint decomposition oflandfill waste. , which owns the gas rightd at DeKalb County’s Live Oak landfill, hopez to process methane gas from the nearby Hickoryu Ridge landfillinto clean-burning natural gas. An out-of-state utilituy has expressed interest in investing inthe project, a sourcwe said. “There’s no secref that we have talked to a number of potentiapl partners about joining us onthe [Livwe Oak] project,” Jacoby Group’s John Borden Those potential partners includwe utilities and private equity investors.
Negotiationz are under way, but “wse do not have the entire deal even under letter of muchless contract,” said an official with Atlanta-based Global Energy Systems, a subsidiary of (Amex: Global Energy paid more than $3 milliob to acquire the Hickory Ridge landfill gas purchasde rights. While Coca-Cola declined to comment on any involvementt with the potentiallandfill project, the company wantz to add some green to its trademark red. “Our aspirationalk goal is to growthe business, not the said Bruce Karas, director of sustainability, environment and safetyy at Coca-Cola North America. “Energy projectzs are really the sweet spotfor sustainability.
” Live Oak is the largesy renewable energy program involving methane gas in the states and one of two operatione of its kind in Georgia. The landfill, whichu closed in 2004 and is said to have an atleast 20-year supply of methane, produces enough naturap gas to fuel about 22,000 homes. The conversiom method used at Live Oak involves capturintg the emittedmethane gas, removing the compressing the gas and filterinbg it through a membrane to removs impurities. Jacoby has partnered with to distributd the natural gas generated atLive Oak. “Any deal we do woulcd preserve theexisting relationships,” Borden noted.
The Hickor Ridge landfill is expected to produce atleasg 2,000 standard cubic feet of landfill gas per Mike Ellis, president of Global Energuy Systems told Biomass Magazinee in February. Global Energy will construct a pipelines to transport it to its gasconditioniny facility, where it will be converted into a saleablw energy product, the magazine noted. Global which has gotten hit bythe recession, is sellinfg assets — including real estate — to raise cash to invest in its biomass, landfill gas and energy services business, Ellis told Atlanta Businesse Chronicle. “We are liquidating assets and selling assetse to put intoenergy products,” Ellis said.
In April, the diversifiecd renewable energy company’s accounting firm issuesd a “going concern qualification” raising substantial doubt about its abilitg to remainin business. Coca-Cola is investing in long-termn “energy innovation” such as fuel cell technology to powere its facilities and directfire water-heating technology nearly a third more efficientr than conventional boilers — for syruo manufacturing. The company switched 70 percent of its fleet of 800 salez vehicles to hybrids last As ofsummer 2008, the company had saved about $400,009 in fuel costs, Karas said. At its Paw Paw, Mich.
-basede juice manufacturing plant, Coke is recycling biogas, produced in the wastewater treatment process, into an energy source to power boilers. That process promises to reduc ethe plant’s natural gas consumption by 10 percent and save Coke “hundredws of thousands of dollars” annually. Coke plan to reduce its global CO2 emissions by 5 percentby 2015, Karas “Only by doing these kinds of combinations of efficiencuy plus innovation can you get he said. The returh on investment for environmental Karas said, cannot be measured just by the corporats bottom-line.
“If I can have a project that gives me a 10 percenyt offset on a natural resourcethat I’nm using, the savings are huge,” he “There’s really not an issue with justifying