CARBON FINANCE

The selling of landfill gas, for example, has been taking place for some time and Durban is an example which presents the first such project to be registered and where carbon finance assisted with the construction existing flare only burns a small percentage of toatl emissions.of South Africa’s first Landfill Gas EfW system.
Such carbon finance is defined as resources provided to projects generating (or expected to generate) emission reductions, in the form of the purchase of such emission reductions (PCF, 2002). Carbon finance is thus determined from a measure of the environmental additionality whereby the emission reductions (ER) that are achieved by the implementation of a given project must be additional to the business as usual (BAU) scenario.
The calculation of the “Baseline Scenario” is, therefore, a calculation of the ER that would not have resulted if the projected was not implemented and/or if carbon finance funds were not made available.
It could be said that a landfill breeze was never so sweet smelling until it became a financial one. Indeed, this is an unfortunate statement that must be made with consideration to the true cost of the globe’s environment. It is the greatest challenge to the environment to realise clean technologies, often termed as Green Technology or in the case of a power generation project, Green Energy, that is economically viable.
In the case of South Africa, most of the electrical power is generated by the parastatal company Eskom through coal-fired power plants. Durban citizens in 2003 purchased electrical power for an overall low unit purchase price of R0.12 per KWh (SA Rand – approximately $0.015 US), when the Durban scheme was proposed.
Following several previous investigations into the utilisation of landfill gas by DSW, no project has been deemed to be financially viable. With particular regard to electrical generation from landfill gas, a unit selling price of no less than R0.25 per KWh could be offered to the electricity department. Indeed this would required a financial “top-up” of no less than 100% before any proposed LFG-to-electricity-generation project became viable, but carbon credits were about to provide this.