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Ammon News - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) announced Monday that it will provide a new financing package worth 14.7 million euros to the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM), as part of its support to strengthening the resilience of Jordan’s infrastructure.

This package is being extended under the EBRD’s GAM Solid Waste Crisis Response Program. It consists of a JD7.9 million EBRD loan to GAM, backed by a 5-million-euro grant from the European Union (EU), according to an EBRD statement.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the Syrian refugee crisis have placed unprecedented strain on the Al Ghabawi landfill; the capital’s only dumping facility. The GAM has seen a significant increase in the amount of solid waste received, causing the cells at the landfill to be filled faster than expected, the statement said.

The new funds will support GAM in constructing a sixth cell to increase the capacity of the Al Ghabawi landfill by six million cubic metres and meet the city’s needs for another three years.

The funds will also support the purchase and installation of an additional gas engine to be connected to the existing landfill gas system (LFG).

The new gas engine is expected to have a capacity of 1.6 MW, increasing the total energy capacity to 6.4 MW.

The extension of the LFG utilisation system from three to four engines will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 73,574 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) per year, of which 5,796 tonnes can be attributed to the substitution of electricity from the grid, according to the statement.

Once capped and connected to the existing LFG collection and utilisation system, the new engine will increase the volume of landfill gas collected and enable the GAM to reduce its operating costs by offsetting its energy bill against the clean energy produced.

Since the start of its operations in Jordan in 2012, the EBRD has invested more than 1.5 billion euros in the country through 61 projects. Of this, some 180 million euros of EBRD financing and 130 million euros in grants have been mobilised under the EBRD’s Municipal Resilience Refugee Response Framework.