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Landfill gas to generate electricity

By Xiao Xin (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-07-06 09:46

TheWorld Bankhas signed its first greenhouse gas reduction agreement in China to develop a landfill gas project.

The Shuangkou landfill gas project, located in Tianjin, will recover gas from the Shuangkou landfill and use it for electricity generation.

Reductions achieved in greenhouse gas emissions will also be sold to the Spanish Carbon Fund under the global mechanism for trade in carbon credits.

Project developer Tianjin Clean Energy and Environmental Engineering Company Ltd (TCEE) will collect landfill gas, half of which is expected to be methane that has 21 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide (CO2). The rest will be CO2 and other gases.

It will produce power by installing a landfill gas collection system, electricity generation equipment and a gas flaring system on the site.

"Tianjin is the first landfill gas project the bank has undertaken in China and is a prototype of what could be," said Greg Browder, senior environmental engineer and task leader of the project.

There are 87 cities in China with a population of 1 million residents or more that produce large amounts of greenhouse gases.

"The residents of these and other large cities discard significant quantities of waste that will emit methane in a disposal site. The potential for landfill gas projects like Tianjin is enormous," he said.

The landfill gas project is expected to start by early 2008. Gas will be collected in pipes from a series of wells that tap into waste disposal sites.

The collected gas will be then transported in pipes to a central facility where it will be burned to produce electricity for sale to the North China Power Grid.

"As a renewable energy project, the Tianjin project will provide societal, economic and environmental benefits and result in a positive impact on the global climate," said a TCEE official who declined to be named.

"With its approval in China and with the emission reductions purchase agreement signed, the project is now on its way to being registered as a Clean Development Mechanism project."

Landfill gas is the fourth-largest contributor to non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions.

The Shuangkou landfill was the first modern sanitary landfill in the North China city.