Exclusive: This startup just secured funding to turn landfills into green energy generators – a 'climate tech blindspot'

When Joren Tangelder and Anthonie Jacobson began visiting landfill sites to interview potential customers for their new startup, they quickly realised just how forgotten this corner of climate tech really is.

“We’d ask landfill managers when last they'd been pitched a tech solution, and most of them would say ‘never,’” recalls Tangelder, co-founder and CEO of Amsterdam-based Hydryx.

Landfills account for around 2% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, more than the entire aviation sector. These giant rubbish dumps mainly pump out methane – a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than CO2. Yet innovation here largely remains stagnant.

“Landfills are one of the last big blind spots in climate tech,” Tangelder tells Impact Loop.

Heaps of potential?

Landfill gas, composed mainly of methane, is produced as organic waste decomposes anaerobically. To harvest the gas, large pipes are drilled into the landfill's core.

“Every landfill already has a gas extraction system,” Tangelder explains. “It’s basically a bunch of pipes and a huge blower that creates a vacuum to suck up methane. But operators still monitor it by hand – opening and closing valves based on gut feeling.”

Hydryx’s system automates that process. Small sensors are placed on each well, connected to the cloud, where software continuously adjusts valves for optimal capture.

Once captured, most landfill gas is either flared – burned off to convert methane into CO2, which is less potent but still a greenhouse gas – or used to generate energy, like electricity or heat.

In a pilot with Dutch waste management company Renewi, Hydryx’s setup boosted green energy output by 40%.

The tech is an efficiency play at heart, but one that could have an outsized impact. Europe has over 50,000 landfills, and even incremental improvements could yield enormous gains.

The catch

One potential downside of the technology, though, is that for landfills that still use flaring, Hydryx’s tech may simply allow them to extract more gas for burning, which is a growing climate problem in and of itself.

“Flaring is not ideal,” Tangelder admits. “But it’s far better than letting methane into the atmosphere directly.”

The founder said he hopes that more landfills will start focusing more on producing energy from methane rather than just burning it. “Methane is not just a problem,” he says. “It’s also a fuel. It's a valuable gas that we should be using.”

Methane money

Hydryx is betting that landfills will begin seeing methane as a resource rather than a problem – and so are investors.

The startup just secured €2.5m in a funding round led by angel investor Marcel Smits and Graduate Entrepreneur, alongside existing investors Innovation Fund North Holland and CarbonFix.

Smits called it the biggest “bang for your buck” climate solution he’d ever seen.

Hydryx now plans to expand operations across the Netherlands, UK, Belgium, and Germany, and says it’s also received interest from outside Europe.