Florida RNG: Nopetro Breaks Ground on a $50 Million Landfill Gas Plant
Florida RNG Facility
Nopetro Energy has broken ground on a $50 million renewable natural gas production facility at the Lena Road Landfill in Manatee County, Florida, joining Johnson Controls, Mead & Hunt and county officials to start construction on the first project of its kind on the state’s west coast.
The plant will capture methane generated as buried waste decomposes, purify it to pipeline quality and inject it into existing gas infrastructure, where it will be used mainly as fuel for buses and trucks. The project was first announced in November 2025, and operations are expected to begin in 2027.
What the Plant Is Expected to Deliver
Once running, the facility is expected to produce enough renewable energy to power more than 4,500 Florida homes a year while eliminating emissions equivalent to 5.3 million gallons of gasoline — roughly the carbon captured by 22,000 acres of forest, according to Nopetro.
“We’re taking landfill gas that would otherwise be wasted, turning it into renewable natural gas and putting it into the pipeline to serve Florida’s transportation needs,” said Nopetro Energy chief executive Jorge Herrera, describing the investment as one that will deliver value for Manatee County for years to come.
A Contract Structure Worth Noting
The project sits inside a 20-year energy savings performance contract with Manatee County. Under that agreement the county earns more than $800,000 in annual revenue, with potential growth of up to $2.1 million, and receives third-party measurement and verification of system performance.
Johnson Controls provided preliminary design, engineering and strategic consulting, and will carry out measurement and verification for the life of the project. Mead & Hunt is the engineering, procurement and construction partner responsible for designing and building the facility.
Manatee County utilities director Patrick Shea framed the deal as creating value from infrastructure the county already manages, turning a landfill byproduct into a community asset rather than a liability.
Building Out a State Platform
The Manatee County plant expands a Florida footprint Nopetro has been assembling steadily. It follows the company’s first landfill gas-to-RNG facility in Vero Beach and complements 15 RNG fuelling stations operating across the state, giving the molecules a captive route to transport demand.
Landfill gas is a finite, declining resource at any single site, so the operators that win are the ones that secure multiple gas sources and a dispensing network able to absorb the output as volumes shift.
That vertical integration — production, pipeline injection and dispensing under one operator — is what turns a biogas project into a durable business rather than a one-off emissions credit play.
Make Landfill Gas a Bankable Energy Asset
Projects like Lena Road work because the gas, the offtake and the performance guarantees are locked together before construction starts. Klean Industries develops biomethane, gasification and waste-to-energy facilities on exactly that basis, matching feedstock characterisation to purification, injection and end-use contracts.
Delivered with KBR, our turnkey plants are performance-guaranteed, 100% bankable and built to transfer technical risk away from the owner. Our reference base is commercial-scale operating plant, including a commercial recovered carbon black facility in Poland.
Two routes are open: license the technology and operate it under your own banner, or have KBR engineer, build and guarantee the plant turnkey. A feasibility study on your landfill’s gas curve is the place to begin.
Contact Klean Industries » GO.
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