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Collecting methane gas

Sao Paolo is the largest city in Brazil and aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by the year 2012. By collecting methane gas from the city’s waste sites, emissions have already been reduced by 20 percent.

Methane is a greenhouse gas, which is 22 times more powerful than CO2, but has a shorter atmospheric decomposition rate. Methane is formed by the decomposition of certain types of organic material. 60 percent of all methane found in the environment has been created through human activity, especially agriculture. Methane gas from landfills is responsible for two percent of the world’s overall emissions of climate gases and the waste that ends up in landfills continues to produce methane for a minimum of 30 years. Sao Paolo takes the problem seriously. The city’s landfill sites are covered with earth and plastic so that the methane can no longer escape into the atmosphere. Methane is trapped and burned, producing electricity for many of the city’s 19 million inhabitants. 

Methane from landfill sites can be recycled and used as heat, electricity, fertilizer or fuel. 85 percent of the energy and heat consumed at the University of New Hampshire in the US, currently comes from the Turnkey landfill site nearby. In Iceland, methane gas from the Alfsnes waste plant enables two buses, thirteen waste trucks, two other trucks and 110 private cars to get around the island without the use of fossil fuels. In Norway and the EU, it is now forbidden to throw decomposable rubbish onto landfill sites. In many developing countries, landfills are a problem which is expected to increase with rising standards of living. For this reason, more and more landfill sites are gaining UN-approved climate quotas for the collection of methane gas. The quotas are sold on the international quota market and make collecting methane a profitable business. 

 

Read more:
http://www.c40cities.org/news/news-20080806.jsp
http://www.sustainableunh.unh.edu/climate_ed/cogen_landfillgas.html#
http://www.nordicenergysolutions.org/solutions/bio-energy/bio-gas/copy_of_landfill-biogas-for-transportation