Climate Change, Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

CLIMATE CHANGE: Brazil Seeks Clean Energy – in the Garbage

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 6 2004 (IPS) - Making it economically feasible to generate energy from garbage could be one of the first concrete results of the Kyoto Protocol, which goes into effect on Feb. 16.

That is at least the aim of the first project registered with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), created by the Protocol, the international treaty whose objective is to curb global warming.

The project is Brazil’s NovaGerar plan, which will use the methane gas generated by landfills in Nueva Iguazú, a municipality of one million people on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to fuel a thermoelectric plant with the capacity to generate 12 megawatts.

The project will cut emissions of gases that cause the greenhouse effect by the equivalent of 14 million tons of carbon dioxide over the next 21 years.

That reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will be converted into certificates that will be tradable on a new emissions certificates market.

The electricity generated by NovaGerar will cost around 140 reals (50 dollars) a megawatt – much more costly than the hydropower that now covers most of Brazil’s energy needs, admitted Adriana Montenegro Felipetto, manager of environmental questions in S.A Paulista, one of the companies developing the project.

That means its economic feasibility depends on carbon credits, "direct sales to commercial consumers that pay high rates, and government subsidies for alternative, clean energy sources," she told IPS.

Gas from garbage "contains impurities, it has to be cleaned," and the special equipment for the thermoelectric plant must be imported, all of which drives up the cost of generating electricity, explained Nuno Cunha e Silva, director of Ecosecurities, a transnational consultancy that provides expertise in emerging environmental markets like the carbon market.

Nevertheless, the waste produced by Brazil’s metropolitan regions represents great energy potential, because it could generate around 400 megawatts of power, he said.

Although that is a relatively small amount of energy in this country of nearly 180 million, equivalent to just 0.5 percent of Brazil’s current capacity to generate electricity, it has several advantages: the energy is produced in the same area that it is consumed, and the initiative offers a number of environmental and social benefits at the local level, while helping curb global warming, Silva told IPS.

NovaGerar is a partnership between Ecosecurities and S.A Paulista, a Brazilian construction and trash collection firm that won, in 2001, the concession to administer two garbage dumps in Nueva Iguazú for 20 years.

The initial commitment was to clean up the old Marambaia rubbish dump, which contained around two million tons of waste. The dump was closed and buried in 2002.

What are now needed are systems to capture the gases released by the landfill and drain the moisture produced by the decomposition of the waste, to keep it from polluting underground water supplies and rivers.

The gases must be removed anyway, to prevent explosions in the landfill. The portion that is not utilised to generate electricity will be burnt.

The Adrianópolis landfill, which replaced the Marambaia dump, was planned to properly dispose of 2,000 tons a day of garbage from Nueva Iguazú. It also forms part of the project.

Rehabilitating the Marambaia dump provided solutions for another serious problem: dozens of families eked out a living by sorting through the trash for food and materials that could be sold.

The project has offered the waste pickers 150 formal sector jobs (with benefits) involving reforestation of the landfill area, landscape improvement, administration, and operation of equipment, said Felipetto.

"Our biggest pride" is to have hired people like Jaqueline Silva, who used to support her family by scavenging the garbage "in subhuman conditions," but today has a decent job planting seedlings, she said.

Nueva Iguazú was chosen by S.A Paulista because of its "good location and the market possibilities it presents," Felipetto explained.

The model followed – a partnership between the government and private companies, "with benefits for all" – can be copied in other urban areas, she underlined.

The municipal government will receive 10 percent of the revenues from the sales of the electricity generated and carbon credits, which will be paid by the Netherlands Clean Development Facility, linked to the World Bank, said Silva.

In his view, projects with the public sector can run into difficulties due to the limited lifespan of governments, and long-term guarantees are needed, like the 20-year concession granted to NovaGerar.

But there is uncertainty as to what will happen after 2012. Under the Kyoto Protocol, which goes into effect in February because ratification by Russia was finally achieved in November, 38 industrialised and East European countries have assumed a commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2012.

Later targets will begin to be negotiated next year.

The CDM allows industrialised nations to partly meet that commitment by means of projects in the developing world, through the Green Certificates and Emission Allowance Market.

Carbon credits are an additional incentive for city governments in Brazil to fulfill their "constitutional obligation" to properly dispose of garbage, said José Maria Mesquita, coordinator of a trash control programme in the state of Rio de Janeiro.

NovaGerar represents a stride forward in the long battle to curb the sources of pollution of Guanabara Bay, whose waters and beaches are in poor shape because of the effects of the waste and sewage generated by 8.2 million people living along the coast and the 35 rivers that run into the bay.

The pollution not only destroys biodiversity in the bay, but also spreads water-borne diseases like hepatitis, diarrhoea and leptospirosis, as well as skin infections, said Adauri Souza, a video producer who volunteers with the non-governmental Guanabara Bay Institute, which is fighting to save the bay.