In Wiltshire, England, a company called Sustain Wiltshire just started pumping purified CO2 — captured from landfill gas — into a 65-by-130-foot growing dome. Inside, they're growing avocados, tomatoes, and other produce that normally wouldn't survive a British winter. One site could eventually produce 8,000 tonnes of fruit and vegetables a year while preventing 3,800 tonnes of CO2 from hitting the atmosphere.
It's a good story. But it's also a window into something bigger happening across the landfill gas sector — a shift from treating LFG as a waste product to be burned off, toward treating it as a feedstock for entirely new value chains.
Beyond the Flare Stack
For decades, the default approach to landfill gas has followed a simple hierarchy: capture it, flare it if you can't use it, generate electricity if you can. Projects that made it to the electricity stage earned carbon credits, mostly under the CDM's ACM0001 methodology. It worked, and it still works. But the Wiltshire project points to a third option that's been underexplored: using the CO2 fraction of LFG directly.
Landfill gas is roughly 50% methane and 50% carbon dioxide, plus trace compounds. Most projects focus on the methane — either destroying it through flaring or combusting it for power. The CO2 has generally been treated as an afterthought. Sustain Wiltshire's approach flips that. They're capturing the CO2 from the gas-to-power exhaust and using it to accelerate photosynthesis in enclosed growing environments. The dome creates 130 jobs and aims to supply up to 80% of local fresh produce demand.
Is this scalable everywhere? Probably not. But it demonstrates that the value proposition of LFG projects can extend well beyond carbon credits and kilowatt-hours.
The Policy Tailwind
The timing here isn't coincidental. At COP30 in Belem, negotiators adopted the first methodology under the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism: A6.4-AMM-001, covering flaring or use of landfill gas. After years of Article 6 framework negotiations, the fact that an LFG methodology was first out of the gate says something about where the market sees proven, scalable mitigation potential.
Meanwhile, the ICVCM has already approved Verra's landfill gas methodologies (ACM0001 and AMS-III.G) as meeting its Core Carbon Principles. CCP-labeled LFG credits from North American projects are trading around $7.24 per tonne, with Latin American projects at $5.84. More LFG credit categories — covering an estimated 76 million issued credits — are still under CCP assessment.
Put these pieces together and the picture is clear: LFG is moving from legacy CDM territory into the high-integrity, Article 6-aligned carbon market. Projects that can demonstrate robust monitoring, verified emission reductions, and compliance with updated methodologies are positioned for premium pricing and buyer preference.
Where Digital MRV Fits
LFG projects are, in many ways, ideal candidates for digital MRV. Unlike forest carbon or soil-based removals where measurement is inherently uncertain, methane capture from landfills involves point-source emissions that can be measured with sensors, metered continuously, and reported in near real-time.
The efficiency gains are substantial. Under manual verification regimes, a single auditor might verify 100 to 150 projects in a year. With digital MRV infrastructure — sensor networks, automated data collection, real-time dashboards — that same auditor can handle 10 projects a day. But efficiency isn't the only argument. For projects seeking CCP labels, Article 6.4 compliance, or bilateral ITMO authorization, the quality of monitoring data directly affects credibility and, increasingly, pricing.
The challenge, as always, is that most existing LFG methodologies were designed for manual reporting cycles. Retrofitting them for digital-first verification is possible but messy. The projects that will capture the most value are the ones designing their monitoring systems for digital from the start — building the sensor infrastructure, data pipelines, and automated reporting that buyers and regulators are starting to demand.
What Comes Next
The LFG sector in 2026 sits at an interesting inflection point. The CDM is winding down (final closure by end of 2026), Article 6.4 has its first methodology in place, CCP labels are live for some categories and pending for others, and innovative projects like the Wiltshire domes are showing what's possible beyond traditional use cases.
For project developers, the strategic question isn't whether to transition from CDM to Article 6 — that's a given. It's whether to position LFG projects as commodity carbon credits competing on price, or as high-integrity, digitally verified, CCP-labeled credits commanding premiums. The price difference between a standard LFG credit and a CCP-labeled one is already measurable. As more assessment decisions land, that gap will likely widen.
And maybe, at some particularly forward-thinking landfill sites, the credits will come bundled with locally grown avocados.