Yesterday's rubbish, tonight's lights: a San José landfill now feeds power into Costa Rica's grid

A landfill is usually where value goes to end. At the Uruka Environmental Technology Park in La Carpio, San José, it is becoming a power station. EBI Costa Rica captures biogas — the gas released as organic waste breaks down — through 87 extraction points across the site, and converts it into electricity: 170 kilowatts of installed capacity, generating around 100 kilowatts continuously, enough to power the facility itself with surplus fed into the national grid under a distributed-generation agreement with state utility CNFL. The captured gas would otherwise escape as methane, a potent greenhouse gas; burned for power, it works for a living instead. And this is only the start: about 6% of the biogas captured at Uruka is used for power today, and the site alone could reach 2 to 3 megawatts. EBI plans similar systems at Aserrí and Limón in 2027, and estimates the three parks at full development could supply the equivalent of nearly 18,000 households — steady, round-the-clock renewable power made from rubbish.

SDG 7 · Affordable and clean energy — Mechanism: infrastructure build