What happens when the gas produced by a large landfill is treated as an energy source rather than just being allowed to escape? At the rubbish dump in Bilbao, Spain known as Artigas, a system was used which was intended for gathering the biogas produced as a result of urban waste decomposing. The site received every day about 700 tonnes of waste from Bilbao and the neighbouring towns, the amount being equivalent to a population of about 800,000 people, as per a report by CORDIS - EU.
The project was intended to show that landfill gas could be collected and then used as a source of electricity, and in its first year of operation, from November 1992 to October 1993, the plant produced 4.4 million kWh of electricity.
