Eleven years after the San Nicolás landfill began generating clean electricity from biogas, Aguascalientes continues to take advantage of the carbon credits that this plant produces, with the support of ALLCOT.

In 2012, the city of Aguascalientes, in association with ENER-G, opened the clean electricity production plant aiming to support the energy supply of local industries such as Nissan.

How this biogas plant for clean energy production works

Aguascalientes uses biogas rich in methane (CH4) produced by organic waste when it decomposes anaerobically in the landfill.

Methane is a greenhouse gas, and when organic waste is not properly treated, this methane gas is released into the atmosphere, negatively contributing to climate change.

The project installed an active collection system of biogas to conduct it through a system of wells and pipes to a clean electricity generation plant. The electricity produced is delivered to the national electricity grid, displacing conventional electricity production from the country’s electricity mix, which is partially made up of fossil fuels.

Carbon credits for clean energy production

This project is registered with the United Nations Organization (UN) under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) program, which is part of the Kyoto Protocol, allowing it to certify the reduction of emissions and obtain economic benefits in cash for the Municipality of Aguascalientes.

However, this Project and other CDM projects in the world have not issued all the carbon credits they have generated due to the decrease in their price in 2012; which meant that it was not economically viable to carry out the verifications that are required before issuing them.

ALLCOT is supporting Aguascalientes in the issuance of its carbon credits

Today the reality of carbon credits is different and ALLCOT helps these projects recover and organize their monitoring system to continue issuing carbon credits.

At the Aguascalientes biogas plant, ALLCOT has been in charge of updating the documentation after all these years and carrying out, together with YLEM ENERGY, the most recent verification of the carbon credits that remained to be issued from this project between 2012 and 2016.

Among the support activities performed by ALLCOT are those of conducting the Monitoring Report, developing the calculations of emission reductions, and providing support during the audit for verification and resolution of findings.