This story appears in the September 2025 issue of Utah Business. Subscribe.
Each of Utah’s 29 counties offers unique advantages for businesses and talent alike. Let’s visit Weber County.
Global Warming Potential (GWP) measures how much a specified gas will warm the Earth compared to carbon dioxide. The larger the GWP, the more potent the gas.
As the base gas, carbon dioxide has a GWP of 1, determined by a study of the gas’s atmospheric life, potency and quantity in our atmosphere. Despite having a much shorter atmospheric life and quantity, methane’s GWP typically measures anywhere from 27-30, meaning it is much more potent than carbon dioxide. And it is the second-highest gas emitted globally.
From fossil fuel production and use to agriculture, wetlands and even termites, global methane emissions averaged 669 teragrams per year from 2009 to 2019. With only an average of 633 teragrams of methane removed from the atmosphere per year, the world’s methane budget is 36 teragrams over.
“Because there are natural emissions, you’re never going to get to zero,” Logan Mitchell, a climate scientist and energy analyst with Utah Clean Energy, explains. “The idea is: We want to reduce these human-caused emissions to as low as possible. We’re probably never going to get to zero, … but maybe eventually we’ll find alternative solutions.”
Green is good
Methane from landfills accounts for nearly 2 percent of all United States greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. In Weber County, Utah, local officials and homegrown company Qnergy have begun tackling the effects of methane from landfills with those very alternative solutions.
“[Methane abatement] is a really important tool in our toolbox in terms of reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions because methane is such an important and potent greenhouse gas,” Mitchell says.
In the late ‘90s, Weber County closed down a landfill and attempted a methane harvesting program. Stephanie Russell, Weber County director of economic development and government relations, says that though the initial program didn’t work out, it left the landfill with an operating pipe system. When Qnergy approached the city in 2023 with plans for a methane abatement pilot project to test out its new technology, Russell says everything was already in place.
“It’s an off-grid, reliable, completely autonomous system that, with a landfill gas collection system installed, can absolutely collect the methane and destroy the methane. ... [TORCH4] is completely self-powered, … and we’re able to give some power supply to the landfill owners to do other things.”
— Timothy Atwater
“What’s fantastic about what we did is we’re doing the partnership around the pilot. They provided everything for the pilot. We had no investment, no cash investment, just the landfill and the pads like that we helped build, which was like $1,200,” she says. “[It was] a really, really good return on investment.”
The pilot program quickly found success and expanded, allowing Qnergy to abate over 95 percent of the landfill’s emissions. Not only is the methane being ostensibly rerouted, but it is also being repurposed into clean energy and an economic boost for the county.
‘We’re getting paid’
The first boost: usable land. Once the methane emissions and toxins are mitigated, “we will have 142 acres on the river of viable development property,” Russell says. In the meantime, the land is slowly being reclaimed and used as an archery park while Qnergy’s systems continue to mitigate methane, generating electricity during the process.
“They’re generating enough energy off that one site to power about five houses,” Russell says. “We’re cleaning the air. We’re cleaning the ground. The county’s getting carbon credits, and we’re going to be able to use that land in the long term for development purposes.”
Once created, carbon credits can be sold on the carbon market to give companies permission to produce greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane. Currently, Qnergy produces carbon credits through its CLEAR program, a comprehensive landfill methane abatement and carbon credit generation initiative.
“Weber County is going to be way ahead of the curve,” Russell says. “The federal and state governments [want counties] to clean up landfills. We’re already doing it, and we’re getting paid to do it.”
A hub for green
In March 2025, Qnergy announced the release of the TORCH4, a landfill gas-powered Stirling Engine generator and enclosed flare system. The new system is mobile and designed to collect and destroy over 99 percent of methane emissions, even in landfill gas with methane content as low as 30 percent.
“It’s an off-grid, reliable, completely autonomous system that, with a landfill gas collection system installed, can absolutely collect the methane and destroy the methane,” Timothy Atwater, general manager of the biogas team at Qnergy, says. “[TORCH4] is completely self-powered, … and we’re able to give some power supply to the landfill owners to do other things.”
As the home and headquarters of Qnergy, Weber County is proud of its public-private partnership’s success and the advancements Qnergy is making in methane abatement. Russell says they are now looking to expand and bring more green energy-focused companies to the area. The county’s partnership with the Utah Inland Port Authority will help the county provide the incentives needed to attract companies and build a synergistic, sustainability-focused business community.
“I’m trying to create a clean and renewable energy hub [in Weber County],” Russell explains. “We have been looking at ways we could start implementing sustainable practices inside the county, not just with creating an energy hub, but by being a promoter of good, sustainable practices with the businesses we support and work with.”