Cape Town is now generating electricity from trash

Cape Town has switched on a gas-to-energy plant at one of its large landfills, where gas from waste is now used to produce electricity.

The R93-million Coastal Park Landfill gas project not only reduces harmful methane gas – a so-called greenhouse gas – but uses it to generate 1,3 million kWh a month – enough to power 4 300 households.  

The gas is extracted via perforated pipes, or ‘wells’, dug into the landfill site in Muizenberg, and then channelled as fuel to produce electricity. The site generation plant was officially powered up last week. The City plans to invest a further R82m to expand this infrastructure at more landfill sites over the next three years, the City said in a press release.

‘It was exciting to power-up our landfill gas-to-power plant at Coastal Park Landfill today,” commented Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis. “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,’ Hill-Lewis said.

The gas-to-power plants will ultimately pay for themselves due 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,” the City said.