In 2009, Bogotá captured landfill methane from 2 million tonnes of waste; the result sent electricity to Colombia’s national grid, cutting emissions at Doña Juana landfill

Bogotá’s Doña Juana landfill handles about 2 million tonnes of waste each year. For years, that waste also produced methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that could escape into the atmosphere. In 2009, Bogotá began capturing the landfill gas instead. The first goal was simple: stop methane from freely leaking out. The project later took a more unusual step. The captured gas was used to generate electricity and feed it into Colombia’s national grid. What began as a way to control landfill emissions became a small energy project too. Bogotá was no longer treating its waste only as a problem.

How did Bogotá turn landfill gas into electricity?

The process begins beneath the landfill, where organic material breaks down without enough oxygen and produces biogas. Much of that gas is methane, which can be captured through a network of collection systems instead of allowing it to escape into the atmosphere.

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At Doña Juana, the captured gas is directed to a power-generation plant. There, methane-rich biogas is used as fuel to produce electricity, which can then enter the national grid and reach consumers beyond the landfill itself.

The project’s generating plant has a capacity of 30 megawatts and was designed to operate continuously, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That made the project significant not simply as a landfill-management scheme, but as an operating energy facility built around a waste stream that would otherwise continue producing methane.

What changed after methane capture began?

Bogotá had already been capturing and destroying methane at Doña Juana since 2009, before electricity generation became part of the project. Between 2009 and 2016, methane capture and destruction at the facility reduced reported CO2-equivalent emissions by more than 4.4 million tonnes.

The electricity-generating stage took that approach a step further. Instead of treating captured landfill gas only as something that needed to be destroyed, the project used its energy content before sending the resulting electricity into the grid.

The reported annual emissions reduction from the electricity project was about 900,000 tonnes of CO2. Plans described in the Cities100 project profile also called for two additional plants to be constructed by 2018, with the aim of expanding biogas production and further reducing emissions.

Why was Doña Juana such an important site?

The scale of Doña Juana helps explain why capturing its landfill gas mattered. A site receiving millions of tonnes of waste generates large quantities of decomposing organic material, and that material can continue producing methane long after it has been buried.

For surrounding residents, the issue was not limited to climate emissions. The project profile says that capturing biogas also reduced exposure to gases including ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, substances associated with the unpleasant and potentially harmful conditions around poorly managed waste facilities.

That connection between waste, energy and local living conditions gave the project a broader purpose. It was not simply about producing electricity from something discarded; it also sought to reduce some of the environmental pressures associated with the landfill.

How did the project benefit nearby communities?

The financial model was another unusual part of the project. According to the Cities100 profile, 24% of proceeds from the sale of carbon-emission reduction credits and 4% of electricity sales were directed toward social investment in communities surrounding Doña Juana.

Those funds supported practical projects rather than remaining solely within the energy operation. Reported investments included kindergartens, a multipurpose community center, pedestrian paths and basic sanitation infrastructure.

The project also provided vocational training for local young people, creating access to skills and employment opportunities that had previously been less available. More than $2 million was reported as having been allocated to the city for social investment through electricity sales.

The Doña Juana project illustrates a broader change in the way cities can approach waste. A landfill is usually viewed as the endpoint of consumption, but organic waste continues undergoing chemical processes after burial, producing gases that can become either an environmental liability or a usable energy source.

Turning methane into electricity does not eliminate the need to reduce waste, recycle materials or improve landfill management. It addresses one part of the problem: the gas produced after waste has already entered the landfill.

Bogotá’s experience also linked that environmental intervention with local investment. The project combined methane capture, electricity generation, emissions reductions and community spending in a single system, showing how infrastructure built around waste can have effects that extend beyond the landfill boundary.

For a city dealing with millions of tonnes of discarded material, the significance was therefore not just that landfill gas could produce electricity. It was that a persistent byproduct of waste could be captured, converted into a useful resource and, through the project’s revenue model, help fund improvements for people living closest to the source of the problem.