Johannesburg ‘green deal’ for Salford engineering firm

Salford-based environmental technology group Ener-g has won a major contract to generate ‘green’ electricity from harmful landfill gas for the City Council of Johannesburg in South Africa.

Over a 20 year period, Ener-g will capture methane gas from the Council’s seven landfills around the City. The methane, which is currently venting into the atmosphere is 21 times more damaging to the environment as an ozone depleting gas  than carbon dioxide. Converting it into electricity for 25,000 homes in South Africa’s largest city is a real bonus both for the economy as well as the environment. 

Ener-g will be the majority share holder, working in partnership with a South African company Energy Systems to develop these projects.   Other participants in the project are the South African government-owned Central Energy Fund, together with Waste Rite and Lukasasa Energy Africa, Ener-g’s  Black Economic Empowerment partners (a government initiative to encourage technology and skills transfer to local business).
 
The agreement gives Ener-g control of some 70 per cent of the landfill gas business in South Africa and comes hard on the heels of the company’s 22 million rand (£1.6 million) contract at Pietermaritzburg, near Durban as well as several other contracts in most of South Africa’s major centres of population.