Lahore to get 40MW waste-to-energy plant within 22 months

LAHORE: Granted formal permission in July this year by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) to generate electricity from solid waste and garbage, a Chinese firm and the Punjab government Friday inked a pact to establish a 40 Mega Watt (MW) waste to energy incineration plant on 52 hectares around Lahore.

The municipal solid waste contains plants or animal products, materials such as paper, cardboard, food waste, grass clippings, leaves, wood, glass, metals, leather products, plastics and other synthetic materials made from petroleum. Senior Punjab Minister, Abdul Aleem Khan, hoped the project would start producing energy within 22 months, though he did not comment on the challenges pertaining to toxic pollutants, which such plants emit and consequently pose threats to public health and environment protection. On July 16, 2018, NEPRA had announced that the project would reduce 2000 tons of Lahore city’s municipal solid waste per day to generate electricity.

Meanwhile, as newspaper reports have suggested in recent past, the idea of building such plants in capital Islamabad is likely to remain in limbo due to indecisiveness of the relevant authorities over selection of the site for its execution.

According to officials of the Metropolitan Corporation of Islamabad, a waste-to-energy plant costing Rs1 billion would have the capacity to recycle over 800 tons of garbage. It goes without saying that the Metropolitan Corporation of Islamabad has planned to install two plants with the capacity to convert 1,000 tons of garbage into 14 MW of electricity.

The Capital Development Authority had earlier earmarked the Sector I-17 for the project, but some months later it allotted it for building a medical city by the National University of Medical Sciences, the Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation officials have claimed.

But somehow, Senior Punjab Minister, Abdul Aleem Khan, has taken the lead by actually giving a timeframe for the completion of the project, less than a fortnight after he had held a meeting with a delegation of Bureau Group Company of China he held on waste management, low cost housing and infrastructure projects related to Punjab. On October 17, 2018, Aleem Khan had expressed his displeasure over the cleanliness situation in Lahore city and had given a stern warning to the senior officers of Solid Waste Management, having told them categorically that they would be handed over pink slips and shown the door if garbage was not removed from streets.

The research conducted by the “Jang Group and Geo Television Network” shows that other countries that have built waste--to-energy power plants include Australia, India, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany,Sweden, Czech Republic, United States, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Nicaragua, Indonesia, Singapore and Uganda etc.

Coming to China, there were about 434 waste-to-energy plants in early 2016, though local citizens have often feared these pants would emit toxic pollutants. Some other sources say by June 2017, 296 incinerator power plants in 28 Chinese provinces were operational. The waste incineration is considered to be better than landfills and have grown in popularity over the years; high levels of toxic emissions have made them a cause of concern for public health and environment protection. As China’s economy has boomed in the recent decades, the amount of garbage and solid waste generated in the country has soared to 200 million tons by mid 2017.

The Chinese government has set a target of disposing of nearly a third of the country’s garbage through waste-to-energy plants by 2030. China's trash-incinerated power capacity had reached about 6.8 Giga Watts by end-2017. Remember, one Giga Watt is equal to 1000 Mega Watts. China is the world’s largest waste generator. With a current population surpassing 1.37 billion and exponential trends in waste output are expected to continue, it is estimated that China’s cities will need to develop an additional hundreds of landfills and waste-to-energy plants to tackle the growing waste management crisis. China’s three primary methods for municipal waste management are landfills, incineration, and composting.

The World Bank has estimated that by 2025, China’s solid waste generation would double to over 500 million tons annually. Although China currently has the world's largest installed capacity of hydro, solar and wind power, its energy needs are so large that in 2015 renewable sources provided only 24 per cent of its electricity generation, with most of the remainder provided by coal power plants.