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A methane-fired power plant that will source its “clean” energy
source from a dumpsite will start operations in Rizal province this
July.
The P1.5-billion plant, developed and operated
by the Montalban Methane Power Corp. (MMPC) at the closed sanitary
landfill in Rodriguez town in the province, will produce an initial
output of two megawatts of electricity, which will be sold to the
Manila Electric Co.
The facility is expected to produce up to 15
megawatts of power per year for a period of five years once it
becomes fully operational.
To sustain the waste-to-energy project, the
Rodriguez landfill currently hosts 1,500 tons of garbage a day.
However, once this amount is increased to 2,500
tons of garbage it would be entirely possible to extend the project
duration to 10 years.
MMPC plans to qualify the project under the
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), an arrangement under the Kyoto
Protocol that allows heavy polluting countries to invest in
carbon-emission-reducing projects in countries that pollute less.
This is done through the trading of Certified
Emission Reductions (CERs) or carbon credits, where one CER is
equivalent to an emission reduction of one ton of carbon dioxide.
And since the MMPC project is designed to
prevent methane gas from escaping into the atmosphere while also
producing power without using up non-renewable energies, it is
expected to qualify as a CDM project.
A relatively potent greenhouse gas, methane in
the atmosphere largely contributes to global warming. It is 21
percent more potent as an environmental pollutant than carbon
dioxide.
Once registered, the MMPC project will be the
country’s first, as well as the 4th largest landfill-gas-to-energy
CDM project in the world. It is expected to earn at least 500,000
CERs.
-- Euan Paulo C. Añonuevo
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