ARCADIS Opens Landfill Gas Plant And Announces Additional Capacity
Arnhem, The Netherlands - ARCADIS, the international consultancy, design and engineering company, recently announced the official opening of the Sao Joao landfill gas installation and power plant by the mayor of Sao Paulo, Gilberto Kassab.
The degassing installation - owned by ARCADIS' affiliate BIOGAS - extracts methane gas generated by the 80 hectares Sao Joao landfill. The methane gas is used as fuel to feed the 24 megawatt power plant which operation was started on January 25th as part of the celebration of the 454 years of the city of Sao Paulo. In addition, ARCADIS announced the development of a third land fill gas installation near Rio de Janeiro. This installation (Gramacho) is based on the same principle and similar in capacity to Sao Joao.
Together, the Sao Joao and Bandeirantes landfill methane gas output is used to generate 340 million Kwh of electricity annually, sufficient power for more than 120,000 households. As a result, the equivalent of 12 million tons of CO2 will be saved in the coming years, which according to the Kyoto Treaty, gets the joint venture 12 million carbon credits. Half of these are shared with the Municipality of Sao Paulo. Of the remaining 6 million carbon credits that are for BIOGAS, a contract for the sale of 5 million of these credits was already signed with the German bank KfW until 2012. Once Gramacho is accredited under the Kyoto protocol, it will generate carbon credits for which BIOGAS can again seek long term contract buyers.
Harrie Noy, CEO of ARCADIS: "These innovative projects underline our commitment to contribute to a healthier world climate. As a world leader in environmental consultancy, we assist many municipalities and companies in reducing their carbon footprint, but the scale at which this happens in the land fill gas installations is especially impressive. According to UNFCCC information about 80% of the total of carbon credits issued so far for landfill projects has been derived from the Bandeirantes Project. Sao Joao and Gramacho will add soon to further increase these significant contributions."
SOURCE: ARCADIS