The City of Cape Town has raised R36 million in an auction of carbon credits for a project that will convert waste to energy in an effort to combat greenhouse emissions.
Carbon credits are used to ‘incentivise the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions’.
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According to News24, legislation regulates the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by a company or any entity.
When that allowance is exceeded, a company can buy a carbon credit to offset its additional emissions.
Carbon credits are calculated from emissions that are reduced, avoided or removed through a project by another company, community, or even municipality.
The City’s project is focused on ‘reducing greenhouse gas emissions from its landfill sites’ through waste-to-energy initiatives.
‘Carbon credits are earned for each tonne of greenhouse gas (GHG) that is destroyed through City projects that have been registered with the UN-approved Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)’, the City said in a recent media statement.
In an effort to remove methane emissions, the City has installed landfill gas infrastructure at its Bellville, Coastal Park and Vissershok landfill sites.
Methane, a greenhouse gas, is about 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide, which contributes to accelerating global warming.
This carbon credit project, which the City has been working on since 2018, started with the Coastal Park landfill site, where R36 million was raised from the City’s first ever auction of carbon credits.
The funds raised from the carbon credit sales will be allocated to urban waste management projects that reduce pollution and ultimately improve environmental health.
‘We welcome this initial return of R36 million from our first carbon credit auction. We are just getting started in scaling up our waste-to-energy initiatives at our landfill sites. These are win-win projects which reduce emissions, generate electricity, and bring in revenue from carbon credit sales for more infrastructure investment,’ said Geordin Hill-Lewis, Cape Town mayor.
‘Around 40% of Cape Town’s record R120 billion 10-year infrastructure pipeline is aimed at upping the city’s climate change resilience. This includes major water and sanitation investments and waste management improvements,’ Hill-Lewis added.
The City has explained that it has infrastructure that is capable of destroying landfill gas via flaring before it can enter the atmosphere and contribute further to climate change.
Waste-to-energy infrastructure has also been installed, and electricity is expected to be generated from the Coastal Park and Vissershok projects within the current 2024/25 financial year.
‘We expect our landfill waste-to-energy initiatives to pay for themselves in time between the sale of carbon credits and reduction in bulk electricity purchases from Eskom,’ said Grant Twigg, mayoral committee member for Urban Waste Management.
‘To convert this gas into electricity, perforated pipes or ‘wells’ have been dug into landfill sites to extract methane gas. This is then channelled as fuel to produce electricity, which we will use to power operations at landfill sites,’ Twigg added.
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