The World Bank has 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.
Under its agreement signed with the World Bank, TCEE will then
sell 635,000 tons of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emission
reductions to the Spanish Carbon Fund managed by the bank.
"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.
(China Daily July 6, 2007)
