The Brothers who Sold Rice Energy to EQT for $8.2 Billion Have Now Decided to Make Renewable Gas from Landfills their Family’s Biggest Investment
The SPAC called Rice Acquisition Corp. announced a deal yesterday to acquire Aria Energy for $680 million and Archaea Energy for $347 million and combine the two into a new company that would become the nation’s biggest producer of zero-carbon renewable natural gas captured from landfills.
Capturing this gas — which would otherwise have just wafted up out of our trash piles and into the atmosphere — is one of the most cost effective and scalable ways to reduce both carbon emissions and the carbon footprint of our fuels.
Once the deal closes later this year, the Rice SPAC (NYSE: RICE) will be renamed Archaea Energy, and be helmed by Nick Stork. They’ll start off producing about 5 million mmBtus of landfill gas per year from nearly a dozen projects, with 20 more in the works, and an eye toward tripling output within three years. Their biggest development is in Dunmore, Pennsylvania at the Keystone landfill, which receives garbage from New York and New Jersey. At 50 million tons in place it’s one of the nation’s biggest and getting bigger, and will produce gas for the next 30 years.