Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis says the City’s new gas-to-energy plant will generate enough electricity to power 4,300 households by converting landfill gas to power at the Coastal Park Landfill. The Mayor powered up the new electricity generation plant on Wednesday, 12 November, together with Mayoral Committee Members for Urban Waste Management, Alderman Grant Twigg, and for Energy, Alderman Xanthea Limberg.
The City has invested R93 million in the Coastal Park Landfill gas-to-energy plant to date, and will invest a further R82 million to expand this infrastructure at more landfill sites over the next three years.
These initiatives are set to pay for themselves in time thanks to reduced bulk electricity purchases from Eskom and the sale of carbon credits. A total of R36 m in carbon credits has already been generated by reducing gas emissions at City landfill sites.
‘It was exciting to power up our landfill gas-to-power plant at Coastal Park Landfill today. We are just getting started with these win-win projects, which produce electricity, reduce emissions, and generate carbon credit revenue to pump back into infrastructure and waste management. In this way, Capetonians are getting plenty of public value from these gas-to-power operations, which we will keep expanding over the coming years at other landfills,’ said Mayor Hill-Lewis.
To convert landfill gas into electricity, the City has dug perforated pipes or ‘wells’ into landfill sites to extract methane gas. The gas is then channelled as fuel to produce electricity, also reducing methane emissions.
‘At Coastal Park Landfill, the City’s waste-to-energy project will generate 1,3 million kWh a month. Of this, 1,2 million kWh will be fed into the Cape Town grid. This is enough power to supply more than 4,000 households. The remaining power will be used to run operations at the landfill facility, generating further savings and efficiency for ratepayers,’ said Alderman Twigg.
