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Johannesburg - Cape Town is about to sign an agreement with the Central Energy Fund to produce electricity from the methane gas generated in the city's landfill sites, Cape Business News reported on Wednesday.
It cited mayoral committee member for utility services, alderman Clive Justus, who said that a report on the project had recently been presented to the portfolio committee. The plan aims to cut down significantly on methane gas that escapes from landfill sites.
"This will be done by way of a cleaner development mechanism carried out in terms of the Kyoto protocol, with low or little risk to the city," he said.
The city's waste management infrastructure includes several large landfill sites. They make a passive contribution to global warming, as decomposing waste produces landfill gas which escapes into the atmosphere.
The city believes the methane gas could generate significant amounts of "green" electricity that can be fed into the national electricity network. This may be lucrative because the National Electricity Regulator of SA recently published favourable tariffs (90c/kWh) for supplies generated by outside bodies and fed into the national electricity grid.
The selling of carbon credits may be an additional income source. These are units of carbon emissions which can be bought or sold between participating Kyoto members (countries and corporations) to comply with the protocol.
Several similar projects have already been registered in South Africa after the success of Durban's Marianhill Gas to Energy project.
- Fin24.com
